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The Spaces In-Between: Lessons from Relocating the Barnes Foundation Collection

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Mon, 2012-09-03 23:49 — scott.martin
What is left to arrange if you are a museum and the precise layout--wall-by-wall and room-by-room--of your latest collection have been mandated by legal ruling?  This is the challenge encounteterd in rehousing the artwork comprising the Barnes Foundation Collections in downtown Philadelphia. The organization of the artwork is constrained to replicate the arragement created by the original owner and currator of the collection, Albert Barnes. 

According to Christopher Hawthorne, the Los Angeles Times Architecture Critic, it is in the spaces between the galleries where the the new home for the Barnes Collection differes.  While the new location is nearly ten times the size of the old galleries, the pieces do not simple have more space between each other; rather, spaces have been created between the inidividual galleries in order to provide richer content about the artwork on display. Despite maintaining how the works of art are displayed to exacting detail, Hawthorne feels that changes such as improved gallery lighting, additions of grand halls, and of new gardens contribute to the new location being a "poor replica of the Barnes Foundation Museum." 

What makes a collection authentic, the provenance of each artwork or the exact coordinates where said item is on display? 


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