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Blake Gopnik, one of North America’s leading art critics, is the author of the comprehensive biography Warhol. He has served as the art and design critic at Newsweek, and as the chief art critic at the Washington Post and Canada’s the Globe and Mail. In 2017, he was a Cullman Center fellow in residence at the New York Public Library, and in 2015 he held a fellowship at the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York. He has a PhD in art history from Oxford University and is a regular contributor to the New York Times."A clear-eyed assessment of a champion of modern art...a comprehensive portrait." — Kirkus Reviews
“Gopnik ably illustrates the story of Barnes’s rise and his collecting, spiriting the reader along as Barnes flits from passion to passion, feud to feud.” — Wall Street Journal
"A vivid, engrossing biography." — New York Times
“A vibrant and comprehensive portrait of an influential figure in American art history.” — Publishers Weekly
“Charming and fascinating …. The result of Gopnik’s prodigious research is a lavishly illustrated book rich with storylines….the Barnes is, at long last, a public institution. Hundreds of thousands of people now visit annually (this year, I hope, including me). Read the book, and you’ll want to go, too.” — Washington Independent Review of Books
A fascinating biography of the philanthropist Albert Barnes, whose pioneering collection of modern art was meant to transform America’s soul
From prominent critic and biographer Blake Gopnik comes a compelling new portrait of America’s first great collector of modern art, Albert Coombs Barnes. Raised in a Philadelphia slum shortly after the Civil War, Barnes rose to earn a medical degree and then made a fortune from a pioneering antiseptic treatment for newborns. Never losing sight of the working-class neighbors of his youth, Barnes became a ruthless advocate for their rights and needs. His vast art collection—181 Renoirs, 69 Cézannes, 59 Matisses, 46 Picassos—was dedicated to enriching their cultural lives. A miner was more likely to get access than a mine owner.
Gopnik’s meticulous research reveals Barnes as a fierce advocate for the egalitarian ideals of his era’s progressive movement. But while his friends in the movement worked to reshape American society, Barnes wanted to transform the nation’s aesthetic life, taking art out of the hands of the elite and making it available to the average American.
The Maverick’s Museum offers a vivid picture of one of America’s great eccentrics. The sheer ferocity of Barnes’s democratic ambitions left him with more enemies than allies among people of all classes, but for a circle of intimates, he was a model of intelligence, generosity, and loyalty. In this compelling portrait, Gopnik reveals a life shaped by contradictions, one that left a lasting impact.