A Forthcoming Book About the Barnes Foundation

My name is Jay Raymond and for the past six years I have been writing a book about the Barnes Foundation, which will be published in 2026 by Temple University Press.

From the time I first encountered the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania in 1976, through years of study and teaching there, and advocacy, I visited the Foundation hundreds of times. The sum of these experiences shaped a deep association with the Barnes Foundation that makes me well-qualified to write about it.

This GoFundMe campaign was set up in 2023 to raise funds to support me while I write the book. In late 2024 I completed the draft, yet there will be significant out-of-pocket expenses, e.g. editing, to put the draft in ready-to-publish form.

Background

In the 1970s, I studied at the Barnes Foundation under Dr. Barnes’s colleague, Violette de Mazia, and with the renowned teacher, Harry Sefarbi. Later, I joined the faculty of the Foundation, teaching the very class that had been taught by de Mazia.

In the early 1990s, when the Foundation’s Board proposed to sell some of its art to raise money and then in 2002, when it decided to remove the collection from Merion, I was part of the organized resistance. I engaged attorneys to represent the students at the Foundation and led the ad hoc group, Friends of the Barnes Foundation, which sought to halt the move. An acclaimed documentary film was produced about the forces behind the initiative to remove the Barnes art collection from Merion. I appear in that film, The Art of the Steal, as an opponent of the move.

The Book

My book is unlike any other about the Foundation. One part explains Dr. Barnes’s ideas, the ideas that formed his collection, in plain language. The book is a guide, providing the reader with a solid grasp of the Foundation’s essential contributions to art and education in America. The objective method of assessing the expressive value of a work of art is described and illustrated with examples. The importance and educational value of the Foundation, beyond its incomparable collection, is made clear.

There is a second part to my book. Once those who knew the Barnes in Merion well are gone, a living record of that experience will be lost. My book is a written record, a detailed description of the experience of visiting the Merion facility and the experience of visiting the Philadelphia facility. The objective method is used to compare those two experiences.

The embodiment of Dr. Barnes' theory, in the form and practice of the Foundation in Merion, will be of great interest to future scholars of art, education, and the Barnes Foundation.

Over the last six years, I have raised funds by directly asking people who know my work. I am casting a wider net because I know there are others who want to preserve the legacy of the Barnes in Merion as a work of art in itself and as a fount of profound ideas about art. I am well-suited to write about both.

Would you, please, consider being a donor to this valuable work? Thank you!