Barnes Foundation
The Barnes Foundation building on Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia
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 Location of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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| Established | 1922 |
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| Location | 2025 Benjamin Franklin Parkway Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Coordinates | 39°57′38″N 75°10′22″W / 39.9605°N 75.1727°W |
| Type | Art Museum, Horticulture |
| Key holdings | Toward Mont Sainte-Victoire (Cézanne), Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin, |
| Collections | Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Early Modern |
| Visitors | 240,000 (2015) |
| Director | Thomas Collins |
| Website | barnesfoundation.org |
The Barnes Foundation is an American educational art and horticultural institution with locations in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia; and Logan Square, Philadelphia. It was founded in 1922 by Albert C. Barnes, a chemist who collected art after making a fortune by co-developing an early anti-gonorrhea drug marketed as Argyrol and selling his company in 1928, just before the stock market crash of 1929.
Today, the foundation owns more than 4,000 objects, including over 900 paintings, estimated to be worth about $25 billion. These are primarily works by Impressionist and Modernist masters, but the collection includes many other paintings by leading European and American artists, as well as ancient works from other cultures.
In the 1990s, the foundation's declining finances led its leaders to various controversial moves, including sending artworks on world tours and proposing to move the collection to Philadelphia. A 2009 documentary, The Art of the Steal, argued that the foundation had been taken over by other non-profit institutions. After numerous court challenges, the new Barnes building opened on Benjamin Franklin Parkway on May 19, 2012. The foundation's current president and executive director, Thomas “Thom” Collins, was appointed on January 7, 2015.
From 1912, Barnes, who derived his fortune from his development of the antiseptic drug Argyrol and a business to sell it, began to study and collect art. He was assisted at first by the painter William Glackens, a schoolmate and friend from Central High School in Philadelphia. In 1912 in Paris, Barnes visited the home of Gertrude and Leo Stein, where he became familiar with the work of such Modernist artists as Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. Commissioned by Barnes, Glackens selected the first 20 works he purchased from modern painters in Paris. In the 1920s, Barnes became acquainted with the work of Amedeo Modigliani and Giorgio de Chirico, thanks to the dealer Paul Guillaume.
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