Next place we went: the Barnes Foundation. This place is a lot more grand and intimidating, and definitely has bougie exclusionary vibes

You walk into the gallery and the first walls are covered with naked ladies, which is funny when the controversial aspect of a piece in the previous museum was wearing modern clothing.

The walls are packed with art, which I find charmingly gaudy. You have this High-Class establishment that is just punching you in the face with art, and I find it ironically less intimidating this way.

The frustrating thing is theres no context. No info on what’s being displayed. There are books in each room with the names, artists, and dates, but no information on the pieces themselves or what the artist was up to when he made them

All of the art in the first floor gallery is recognizable; typically medieval, Impressionism, and post Impressionism, with bits of cubism. It’s all stuff that a casual viewer would recognize as “important,” and they would KNOW this is “real art”

Since everything here is “real art,” there’s nothing challenging. No one would argue something doesn’t qualify as art, or question what such a piece is doing in a High Class Establishment. Art in a museum is like clothes in a closet; that’s where it belongs. It’s expected

To be clear: I LIKE Impressionism. I like post Impressionism. Seeing Van Gogh makes me happy, and I liked seeing his work here. But you get the impression (Heh) these pieces are here because they’re SUPPOSED to be here, so you’re not surprised by any of the pieces

It’s also incredibly ironic that a big part of the art from this era is drawing normal people in daily life, and this place feels incredibly exclusionary to the normal people

So yeah, nice art, but not interesting and not very accessible. The second floor had more interesting and varied pieces, including more cubism, more sketches and incomplete pieces, and sculptures. Parts of the first floor also had some American artists

Matisse, Cezanne, and Renoir DOMINATE the collection. They are in every room, often multiple by the same artist. They take up most of the first floor and a good chunk of the second floor

Like, I thought these were supposed to be RARE, but no! There’s so many! These folks did not stop painting, and some collector must’ve been there waiting to scoop them up! Next time I see something by these guys at a museum, I’m gonna check to see if it’s on loan from here

Anyway, you go through room after room stuffed with these pieces, and at some point... you just don’t care? And in between, you’ll have some medieval art, or a Van Gogh, or something else, but it just doesn’t feel organized

These place should have an Impressionist WING. Or a Matisse wing, or Cezanne. Or a naked lady wing! SOMETHING. Because there’s just no organization, nothing to help the flow. I probably missed a lot of really important/impressive pieces because they blended in with the rest

This also continued on the second floor, even though it wasn’t as domineering. There was a lot more artists, but the big three were still very present.

There were African and asian sculptures on the second floor, but it’s hard to give them much attention when squished between walls of paintings

There was a room filled with more Impressionist work, but with African sculptures on display under them. Considering the Scramble for Africa was going on at the same time as Impressionism, this has thought provoking implications, but it doesn’t feel like this was done on purpose

On to highlights!

There were a couple rooms on the second floor full of sketches that I liked. Cezanne’s incomplete pieces were cool and gave a new perspective.

The first floor had a room or two with American Art (Pippin and Glackens! Both new to me!) but I wish this was more of a section (please see my favorite piece, below)

I like this Seurat, which has naked women next to his painting of clothed people in a park. I love the irony and scale of it, but it’s too damn high! All of the pointillism pieces were too high to get a good look

And I really did love many of the Impressionism pieces. A number of them pop off the page in an amazing way, it feels like they move when you walk by. And I very much loved Van Gogh’s Postman and his use of pink in it

Finally, there’s a really neat exhibit going on called American 30, exhibiting 30 black artists. I was super excited to see work by Kehinde Willey, Basquiat, and Rozeal (I freaking LOVE Rozeal, I first saw her art in Raleigh)

New artists I have a new appreciation for include Lorna Simpson, Mickalene Thomas (also saw her stuff in Raleigh! I spent so long staring at Three Graces), Barkley L Hendricks, and Glenn Ligon