 Good evening everybody. Welcome. My name is Martha Lucy. I'm deputy director for research interpretation and education here at the Barnes and I am delighted that you are all here for this program. This is the second in our four part conversation series called the Barnes then and now, which we've organized as part of our 100th anniversary celebration. This series is an opportunity for us to celebrate our founder, Dr. Albert C. Barnes, and to highlight some of the things that made the Barnes Foundation so distinct during his lifetime. And I am referring to the unconventional installation of the collection, the progressive education program and the fierce commitment to social justice. But this series is not just about sifting through our past. It's also an occasion to reflect on the present to examine our current work in these areas that continue to be so important to the Barnes's identity. The focus for tonight's conversation is our relationship with Lincoln University, the nation's first degree granting historically black university. The relationship between the Barnes and Lincoln began in 1946, and you'll hear much more about this in a minute. I will skip ahead to 1950 when Albert Barnes decided a year before his death that he would grant Lincoln the power to nominate four of the foundation's trustees. In 2003, the relationship between these two institutions resurfaced in the news. The Barnes Foundation's board had expanded from five to 15 members, which meant that Lincoln would no longer nominate the majority of the trustees. There were lots of feelings about this decision that sometimes became entangled with opinions about the impending move of the collection. But we are not here tonight to revisit that controversy. We are here to learn a little bit more about the origins of the partnership in the 1940s because it's a fascinating story and to talk about its future. And this future is exciting and full of potential. And I think the fact that we have the leaders of these two institutions here tonight sitting with us and willing to talk publicly about this relationship is a testament to that. Brenda Allen, sitting in the middle, is President, Dr. Brenda Allen is President of Lincoln University. She previously served as chair of the African American Studies Department at Smith College, associate provost and director of institutional diversity at Brown, and provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at Winston Salem State University. She earned her bachelor's in psychology from Lincoln and her doctorate degree from Howard University. Tom Collins is New Bauer Family Executive Director and President of the Barnes Foundation. He is a Philadelphia native with more than 20 years of experience at some of America's top art institutions, including the Perez Art Museum in Miami, the New Berger Museum in Purchase, New York, the Contemporary in Baltimore, the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati, the Henry Arts Gallery in Seattle, and MoMA in New York. And Tom has just brought in an incredible vision to this place, and I feel very privileged to work with and for him. The conversation tonight will be moderated by Roxanne Patel-Shepulavi. Roxanne Patel-Shepulavi is executive editor and co-executive director of the Philadelphia Citizen, which is a nonprofit media organization whose mission is to actively reignite citizenship in Philadelphia and to provide excellent journalism that emphasizes solutions to problems. So if you haven't, if you're not familiar with the Citizen, you haven't checked it out, just Google it and go to their website because they are very active and it's, I think it's a really important organization in publication. I am so grateful to the three of you for being here tonight. And thank you to everybody for being here too, and welcome to everybody who's tuning in online. So I'll let you get started. Thank you. Is this working? Is this on? Yes? Great. Hi. Thanks, Martha. I'm really pleased to be here and thank you to all of you for being here as well. Martha gave a little bit of background, and I wanted to actually start with a quote from Dr. Allen here from when we spoke earlier, just to sort of set the framing for what we're going to talk about. She said, how do we salvage the intent of Albert Barnes and Horace Mann Bond, the president of Lincoln at the time, given everything that's happened and have a relationship that manifests in the 21st century? So this is, this is what, and I got a little sneak preview and it's very, it's very cool. So I wanted to start first with, let's go back a little bit. Actually, let's go back a lot. Let's go back, you know, 1946, I think it was. I'd love to know a little bit about, a little bit more about Dr. Barnes, a little bit more about Dr. Mann Bond, and so if each of you could sort of, you know, take your guy. And then, and then I'd love to know a little bit about the, how the relationship started. So, Brenta, why don't you start? All right. Well, thank you. And it's great to be here with Tom. And it's, I just want to say it's been somewhat of an emotional roller coaster, just going through preparing. And what I did wrong was I started with the controversy of the more recent years as opposed to the real story. And I got back to the real story and I'm just fascinated by two men who were just incredible and very maverick in their thinking. For their time. So Dr. Horace Mann Bond, one thing I think is impressive for African Americans is that in born in 1904, he was already a second generation educated. So both of his parents were educated at integrated colleges in Ohio, which sort of set him off on a path that was so very different than the path set off for Dr. Barnes. And I find that just interesting in a paradoxical way. He graduated at 19 years old from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. He then went on various teaching jobs, but finished his master's and his PhD at the University of Chicago. And his intellectual work over the course of his life was really around veteran educational experiences for African Americans. And he's often described as someone who worked really openly to try to push for desegregation, but at the same time worked very quietly to try to make sure that the education that African Americans did have access to was the best education that we can possibly have. I became really acquainted with Dr. Bond, President Bond as a graduate student. So one of my research interests had to do with intelligence. And in reading some of the really very early work that black psychologists and black sociologists were doing in the 1930s, I came across many of the papers where he wrote and offered all kind of data to refute the idea that black people were inherently inferior to whites. A lot of the data that was used in a big study called the Alpha Beta study on Army recruits looked at the intelligence scores of blacks versus intelligence scores of whites and concluded that blacks were intellectually inferior. And Bond and some other early scholars were able to take that data, pull it apart, found trends such as blacks who lived in the north scored higher than whites who lived in the south. They found that education and background was much more related to how people scored on those tests rather than race. And so it really began a different sort of inquiry into the whole debate on IQ and intelligence. And so he was really a leader there. So to really recognize then that I now sit in a seat where he once said it's just really very interesting to me. And to find out this week that I sleep in a house where Dr. Barnes was one night is a little spooky to me. But anyway, I have inherited a great legacy and I want to do my best to make sure that we steward it to the highest degree. It's a great story. Dr. Barnes story is a great story to and I'm going to try to hit just a few of the highlights that I think are relevant to the conversation we're about to have. Dr. Barnes was born in 1872 into poverty. He was raised in a couple of really under resourced underserved neighborhoods in the city. Important to his story is that he spent a great deal of time with his mother as a child. And he and Dr. Bond actually shared the fact that they were both raised as Methodists. And while it seems like it shouldn't be relevant to the story, it's very relevant in the sense that Barnes mother frequently took him with her when she would attend what were integrated, you know, camp, tent revivals and camp meetings. Methodism in the period right after the Civil War was the fastest growing denomination in the United States. And it was in part the fastest growing denomination because it was really the first Protestant denomination that argued for earned salvation as opposed to predestined salvation. So it was very popular with people who were not privileged. It was very popular with African American people. It was very popular with poor people. And so Dr. Barnes was raised in that tradition. And often his life spoke about the very significant early childhood memories of being at these revival meetings and hearing African American people at the meetings performing music, singing. And how the power, the transcendent power of this spiritual tradition was his first inkling of the transcendent power of aesthetics, right? He was not a religious person in his life, but he very much leaned into the idea that formal aesthetics in and of themselves separate from representation could actually be transcendent, powerful in that way. He was educated at Central, he was a scholarship student at Central High School and then a scholarship student at Penn. He graduated at the age of 20 with an MD from the University of Pennsylvania. He then became involved in the early pharmaceutical industry. He studied in Germany and came back to the United States at the end of the 19th century and began working with a partner to produce their own pharmaceuticals. They developed their own pharmaceutical that became very popular called Argyrol. It was the first top of the antiseptic of its time at a moment when there were no oral antibiotics. So it was used for everything from nose infections to ear infections and eye infections. Significantly, it was very easy to produce. It was very cheap to produce. And in his factory in West Philadelphia, which had an integrated staff right from the outset and also was managed by women, which is very interesting. It was a small staff. It was so easy to produce and so lucrative. He was a millionaire by 1905, but in the factory he had witnessed in Germany factory education programs for workers. And he thought I so he compensated his workers for eight hour work days, but only required them to work for six and two hours every day were set aside for education, education in a pragmatic tradition. It wasn't civics. It wasn't economics. It was he would read from philosophical and psychological treatises by pragmatic authors like William James and George Santayana and most significantly John Dewey. And they would conduct these very sort of elaborate conversations about the significance of these arguments about how one could be in the world and improve oneself, improve one's lot in life by developing ever higher powers of self critical reflection. He began bringing art into the factory and that became part of the education program and developed what was later called the Barnes Dewey method or objective method that involved extended periods of observing the formal aspects of pictures and discussing them. But it really was he referred to works of art as instruments, not even talk about them as works of art, but as instruments in an educational process by which one could cultivate one's sense of self self awareness self critical powers and so forth. And in that way go back out into the world and improve one's lot in life. So, John Dewey, who was a very good friend encouraged him to open the foundation to grow that educational project it opened in 1925, and he conducted a quite elaborate educational program there until his death in 1951. Significantly, and I guess I could segue right into this conversation. He was very involved with various social movements. He was deeply interested in the experience and culture of people of color. And he was very interested in John Dewey's arguments about democratic inclusion and education, and very interested, even before the establishment of the foundation in how he could support the education of African American people. So I'm going to do a very quick chronology that was prepared by our archivist Barbara Bochar, former archivist, that tells you about the arc of their relationship, which really was Dr. Bond and Dr. Barnes, which really only lasted for five years, but I think for both of them was very significant. They met in the fall of 1946. Barnes and Bond met at a funeral for a gentleman called Nathan Moselle, who was the first African American to graduate with a doctor of medical arts degree from Penn, and was the founder of the Frederick Douglass Hospital. They both spoke at his memorial service. It was a Lincoln grad. It was bound to happen. Barnes then, they met at this memorial service, and Barnes invited Bond to the Barnes Foundation to discuss its educational program, and Bond responded with a reciprocal invitation for Barnes to speak at Lincoln University. In the winter of 1947, Barnes did speak at Lincoln, and then he met informally afterward with students at Dr. Bond's home, and he actually stayed overnight, the ghost of Dr. Barnes. And then he later, he was so impressed with the students he met there that he actually made a $1,000 donation to Lincoln right after that visit and dedicated that money to supporting tuitions and living expenses for students in need. In the fall of 1947, Lincoln Professor Walter Fales then invited Dr. Barnes to speak at the university. Barnes was afraid of driving. He was a scary driver, and it was the winter, so he didn't want to travel out there in the winter and drive, so he postponed his visit till the spring. In the spring of 1948, Barnes again declined this invitation, but instead asked permission to take students from Lincoln to the Barnes Foundation for the first time. So Barnes suggested that Fales select some Lincoln students to enroll in the classes that were already being conducted at the Foundation, and this was in 1948. It didn't actually happen for two years, but this was really the beginning of that formal relationship. I promise I'm almost done. Then, Bond in 1949 after the war traveled for the first time to Africa, and Barnes was able to return for the first time to Europe after the war. Dr. Bond returned with the idea of establishing at Lincoln an Institute of African Studies. In the summer of 1950, Bond offered Barnes himself a lectureship to teach a course on African art as part of this new Institute of African Studies, and Barnes countered in Barnes' fashion. He countered with an offer to fund a Dewey John Dewey professor at Lincoln who would teach classes at the Barnes Foundation for Lincoln students. In the fall of 1950, they hired a gentleman called John Longacre, who was a former Barnes student and a graduate of Columbia University, where John Dewey taught, and Barnes' classes for Lincoln students then began in the fall of 1950. Two weeks, just two weeks after the kickoff of this relationship, Barnes and the Board of Trustees of the Foundation, which involved Barnes and his wife and some close friends, got together and changed the indenture, which was his trust agreement, and the agreement to the bylaws of the Barnes Foundation eventually transferring governance responsibility for the Barnes to Lincoln. And it is not clear if anyone knew this was actually happening on the Lincoln side of the ledger, so try to imagine. In November of that year, Barnes was too ill to attend the launch of the Institute for African Studies. In that spring of 1951, the Lincoln University Board to honor Dr. Barnes for all of this had transpired, offered him an honorary doctorate, which he did not attend the ceremony to receive, but in that academic year they did for the first time hire dedicated teachers to teach those Lincoln Barnes classes. They searched, and this is a really important part of the story, Barnes, and we'll talk about why in a minute, but they had searched unsuccessfully for almost two years to find a faculty member that was trained in the tradition of John Dewey and the pragmatic tradition that Barnes would pay to be a faculty member support at Lincoln, but with the idea that this person would facilitate the relationship and bring students to the foundation. That didn't happen. In the summer of 19, because no one actually stood up, no one stepped up to Barnes' expectations, surprise, surprise. In the summer of 1951, Dr. Barnes was killed in a automobile accident in July, but that September classes did begin. So that first semester of 51, 52 academic year with three new teachers at the foundation and the students were received at the foundation and taught, though there was no faculty member at Lincoln to support the project. So that was really the kickoff of the relationship in 1951. That's a lot in just a few years. The Methodist thing, I think, is interesting because they had such different, such seemingly different backgrounds, but they actually met at a Methodist church, too, right? That's where the funeral was, which is kind of interesting. So tell me, you know, from that beginning, and, Brenda, let me ask you what you think about this. You know, what are there of Dr. Barnes and Dr. Barnes' original intents? Do you think is still relevant today? So I was looking at some letters as well. I didn't have archivists, so I was my own this week. And what I found interesting was that a lot of the conversation that we've had about the move and the change in the number of trustees was just around control of the trustees and the board. But in some of the letters that we have from Dr. Barnes to Dr. Horace Mambon, the real intent was to sort of create this relationship between the Barnes Foundation and Lincoln University, where you would have this superior education offered in his approach to learning art, that you would do it in such a way that it was the most exciting, cutting-edge, you know, best relationship ever, and that he could establish this between the Barnes and the small African-American liberal arts institution, and that it was really about making sure that his approach to education and his value for the, you know, just the power of aesthetics and creating intelligence, I think, is what really drove that vision. And so for me, when I think about that, I think that we spent a lot of time over the last couple of decades worrying about the wrong thing, and that what we really need to focus in on is trying to figure out how to realize this sort of powerful educational program in a way in which Lincoln and the Barnes Foundation can come together to offer this very unique sort of experience. I think what he wanted to do was to put that program in and of itself on a platform or a stage that really attracted international attention. And then I think we still have an opportunity to do that in such a way that we can really begin to build an arts program at Lincoln. So as I've been looking at a lot of different iterations of this, so I went back and I looked at how it was thought about from the perspective of Dr. Sarah Sadakasa, who was actually President of Lincoln at the time that the Barnes and all of the transactions were happening. I think it was around then really that the controlling number of the trustees passed on. And then looking at it again under Dr. President Ivy Nelson, when the sort of court orders and things were going on. And in all of those iterations, there is this focus on this vision for keeping going, the idea of creating this institute where we would be really educating students at Lincoln using the Barnes method. And sometimes it was on his sort of innovative and really pioneer work on African art and the influence of African art on Western and other traditions. Other times it was just the Barnes approach to using aesthetics to actually teach about the humanities. And so how that program was to evolve I don't think ever really fully got off the ground. But in some of the letters that he wrote to President Bond, just really close and prior to his death, it was really clear that he was reaching out to John Dewey to try to figure out whether or not this experiment is what he called it was an experiment, whether or not that experiment would be feasible. And if it would be feasible, how might they all work together to get some other outside agencies connected to financing it. So I think he had in his mind that this would be a really, really big endeavor, that it would cost a lot of money. But I think he thought it would shake up the world if he were to do it. And I think that seems consistent with his personality because that relationship has a lot of shock value to it. And I believe that that was also part of his intent. And so we still have an opportunity to shock the world. I mean, that's my conclusion. Love that. I think shocking the world is great. I think Barnes would love that framing. You know, it was in his relationship with Bond and the proposals that they explored about this partnership. Two of Barnes' core commitments came together for the first time. I mean, the Barnes is not a museum. He was always clear it was an educational foundation. And what he was teaching, yes, about and through the arts, but what he was teaching at a deeper level, right, was this kind of kind of approach to cultivated self-awareness as a basic life scale as a fundamental life scale. But he also, at the same time he was developing the foundation and reaching out to Penn, he reached out to Haverford, he reached out to Swartham, he reached out to Pafa to try to create the relationship that he eventually proposed to and Dr. Bond supported. He was also working very hard in parallel. I mean, this surprised me when I went back, even before the foundation opened, he was involved in conversations and the production of publications about a kind of Dewey and perspective on education for African-American people. And how critical and significant it was for a variety of reasons. And so those things actually came together in this idea that the program would be focused on Lincoln students and supported by Lincoln faculty and so forth. So incredibly important. And then you're, I think you're, many people aren't aware that Barnes was really one of the first people, certainly in the United States to talk about African material culture as something other than anthropological, right. And to speak about it and to value it in the same way people spoke about and valued European modernism, great decorative art, significant historical art from the west, and also of course the great traditions of the world. And so it's also, and in Barnes' mind, of course, making that work available, particularly for the study by African-American artists, authors and so forth, was a way to encourage a kind of connection and a sense of racial pride or race pride at that time. So these things all came together in that relationship with Dr. Bond, which is why he was so enthusiastic about it. And I think, yeah, there's so much to rest out of that story and that set of commitments. Yeah. So, Brenda, when you, when you, I know you guys said you've been talking pretty consistently over the last five years since you've been at Lincoln to really craft what all of this can be. And one of the things that you have done at Lincoln is really, is really try to put a new, a renewed focus on the humanities, right, and the arts and sort of what that can do for people, even beyond careers. And skills. And you, you know, you talk very beautifully about how the arts impacted your learning. So, so, you know, what I, I'd like to know sort of, you know, how do you see the visual arts and in particular what you could do with the Barnes as being part of that mission to really push the humanities. Yeah, I think that is some essential that you have. I think that it's essential if you are a really strong liberal arts institution that you have strong humanities. So I start from, from that perspective. And I'm going to quote Facebook, but it's not really my sources all the time, but I was just looking at Facebook. The other day in there was, I'm on a group of, you know, women of color and higher ed, whatever, and it was a post about from someone who was just really talking about the importance of reading fiction, right, and how she had observed over time that children who were more empathetic, that they see that they seem to have a better grass and, and, and feel for humanity and on and on. So just all the things that many people would argue that really engaging in imagination will do for human growth, right. And she quoted someone who said that they had sort of redefined the different areas and they define nonfiction as learning through information and fiction as learning through the imagination. And I think that that's really true and relevant when you think about arts and sciences, right. And so there's definitely a science to the arts and there's definitely an art to the sciences for sure. So it's not that either or, but when you really think about how visual arts music. And so if you even look in, in Dr Barnes life, you know, that those musical experiences probably open for him imaginations and thoughts and it was so consistent with do we so when you start sort of putting all of that together things start to make sense as to how he thought about it but I think that whole idea of the power of teaching the imagination and how the imagination is really important for helping people to understand not only who they are but it really helps you to understand how you might use that imagination to solve current problems or future problems. And so when we think about the power of liberal arts, just in particular, we're talking about the ways in which we put different ways of knowing together to, to develop the intellect towards really producing individuals that can develop ideas and perspectives and solutions to problems in very novel ways right. And I think that's what this Barnes education was really about. I think it was about training the imagination and I think what was so interesting and his approach is that he approached it like a scientist right. So he was like you observe, but any well put together experiment has some art to it, right that if you're really going to be a good scientist. You have to also I think be a good artist because experimentation is about designing, but what he what I get from his approach to to teaching art is that it's an experiment right you engage stuff. So when you talk about me talking about the artist tools it's for me it just is instrumentation right as a behavioral scientist is it's like the the instruments we use to measure behavior and so on. He saw the art as a way of really touching, you know, your your your product and learning about it and then living with it observation. And so that's a very scientific approach to it. But it's a real, I think, and hopefully this doesn't sound too crazy but it's it's a really great integration of arts and sciences in a way that mimics what the liberal arts tries to do. And so I think that by having access to, you know, just all the great resources that the Barnes Foundation has from the perspective of educated and training and challenging the imagination. We greatly enhance our ability to expose our students to an area of knowledge that has just the potential to really push and and challenge their intellectual development overall and whether or not they major in the humanities or the social sciences or the sciences, their education overall will be enhanced because your imagination and your and your information learning together is really what produces a strong intellectual. So, and I hope that that doesn't sound too way out, but no there's so much in there I don't even know where to start. I mean, you've said, and I think this is true that great art, great art introduces novel ideas in novel forms right in new ways and that has the power to sort of change the way people think and feel and behave. And then the Dewey and idea that it's about experience and critical self reflection is kind of dialectic like I have an idea about the world, and then I encounter something new like a great work of art or great work of literature, and it modifies the way I think about the world so that I behave differently and encounter new things and continually I evolve as an intellect and as an emotional being and so forth because of that dialogue dialectical engagement with the world very Dewey and idea. But I also think something you alluded to there is really important and and that is that I think at base Barnes was very interested in the idea of empathy he was very interested in cultivating using this process of a facilitated engagement with great works of art to cultivate empathy. And he for all of his reputation as a kind of rough, you know, difficult guy, and he for sure was in some circumstances, a challenging guy, right, he was really a rassable. Nonetheless, if you look at what he actually did as opposed to what he said, incredibly generous, a fantastic friend, if you were a great friend of his and so forth. And he clearly himself had a kind of pronounced capacity for empathy, and it was extended in surprising directions for a person of his generation so I think all of those things in here in his approach to presenting and and talking about and engaging the public with art. Yeah, I'm all for it. I have to say, though, it's interesting because the, I mean, from like, from somebody who's not in the world of academia, you know, you colleges have schools of arts and sciences, right, it's always been that connection between arts and sciences. And these days, that's kind of radical, this idea that you would have education that that you would have classes and you would encourage people to just be educated as a whole people without it being because if you take classes at the barns you will be a better engineer. Right, just this idea that it is educating the whole person. And so it's interesting that this idea which I think for a long time was just something that we thought of as being the way education is. It's actually come around again to be as through rebellious as it was when Dr. Barnes was talking about it, which is kind of fascinating. Tom, I'm, I'm going to quote you from the citizen we just story on you, in which you were talking about how part of your mission here from when you started here has been to build networks and communities around our experience, which means in part bringing in an audience that is younger. That is more racially and economically diverse than the, what has been the typical museum goer. So, which of course is also was also Dr. Barnes's mission. So, this is a two part question, how's that going. And how does that pertain to the work with Lincoln in particular. So, the project of developing an audience that I does our goal that we will have not just an occasional audience that mirrors the demographics of Philadelphia but that actually is a walk in audience that mirrors the demographics of Philadelphia, which is to say that we know that if we offer certain kinds of programs we can move the lever around who's attending depends what it is certain kinds of educational programs certain kinds of talks social events and so forth. But what we want is the population of Philadelphia or a representative body of that population of Philadelphia to be a walk in audience to be members to be guests to participate fully in all activities here at the Barnes Foundation. So, to make that happen is a symphonic. It has to you have to take a symphonic approach to it it's everything. Every part of the operation. And I mean there are myriad ways that we've tried to do that but first I think the most important thing is that to acknowledge that museums historically have been great at telling people what they want and need instead of asking them what they want and need. So I think part, a big part of the project at the outset was to figure out to ask the people that weren't participating what they wanted needed from the institution that would make them home more closely to what we were doing. And we did this in a variety of ways. We asked. And so I'll just give you a few examples of things that we did at the outset. One of the things we did was was tweak our exhibition programs. So the collection is fixed. It is what it is and presented in the way that it's, you know, we cannot move it. We've done a great deal to support education around the collection through a variety of digital means and so forth, but collection is not going to move. So our changing exhibition program is one of the key, you know, public presentations. And early on, and Dr. Nancy Harrison, who's our chief curator, who's here tonight was really instrumental in adjusting the program. So when the building opened, the program looked a lot like the European modernist part of the collection. And gradually over time it has become a changing exhibition program that is one third European modernism, one third art of the African diaspora, and one third art by other underrepresented individuals and groups, right? So people can see themselves, a wide variety of people can see themselves in the programs that we do here. Another thing we did was Barnes was very, very interested. He referred to working-class people as the plain people, the plain people, and I want to serve the plain people. He thinking of himself as one of the plain people. And so we really wanted to figure out what neighborhoods we weren't reaching in the city. We were already doing it through our Pre-K through 12 programs, which are focused on schools and underserved neighborhoods. So that was already a big, big hit, but what more could we do? So we actually engaged Temple University, an organization called Be Heard Philly, to sort of go into neighborhoods, zip codes in the city that weren't well represented, or membership body, or visitors, and ask, you know, do you know about the Barnes? Do you know what they do? Have you been there? All these kinds of things. And we were able to take that information, map it onto public transportation routes, develop a series of programs that were focused specifically on branch libraries, parks and rec centers in those neighborhoods. We weren't reaching that were under-resourced, underserved, but that were on public transportation lines that connect them to the Barnes, and build a series of programs in those neighborhood outlets to make ourselves visible. One of them was a virtual tour of the Barnes, take virtual tour into the library, invite people in, give them a virtual tour with an educator, and then invite them to the Barnes on a subsequent weekend. And before the pandemic, we had served hundreds of people through these programs. They, about 40% uptake, people that would do the virtual tour would come to the Barnes on a subsequent weekend and tour with the same educator and their own cohort. And then we created a community pass program. So everyone that participates in these and all of our community and social impact programs is offered a community pass, which is essentially a family membership for a year, free membership with all that that entails. So make ourselves visible, invite people in, make them feel comfortable, help them figure out how to get over the threshold and get into the building and so forth and so on. That has had an enormous uptake and it was very positive. The pandemic, of course, put a chill on all this stuff, so we're now rebooting these activities. And increasingly, we have thought of ourselves as a provider of other kinds of services in the community that are not necessarily artistic services that are aligned with various needs in the social services arena and so forth. So what are our core competencies? How do they meet needs of people we're not serving in the city and how can we bring them? So restorative justice, bi-literacy, education and on and on and on in all of those ways and of course we invite all those people in with community passes. So we've distributed thousands of these and we have quite a bit of uptake on that program as well. So make ourselves visible, ask people what they want, try to give them something they want and need, help them get here, help them feel comfortable and hope that this creates a lasting relationship. Because you can't do it one time. This has to be an ongoing engagement. So just a few things we've tried to do. Yeah, that's great and you were starting to see the results of that and now starting over again, which I get. So let's talk a little bit about what you're actually going to be doing together. So what are some of the programs that you're going to have Lincoln students do at the Barnes? So I have to say preparing for this conversation has really changed my focus. You know, I came into Lincoln as an alum, only knowing what I knew as an alum, right? And then I picked up some programs that we had started since Tom was here, but I don't know, when did you get here? Okay, well I know. So yeah, so I connected with him soon after he got here. And I think we picked up some things that people had started and move those along. But this exercise here has given me an opportunity to really rethink what the intent was. And I now understand that some of the things that we've been doing don't really fit the intent. So yes, it's important that we've done these internships where our students come in to sort of learn museums, right? We know that there is a huge dark of people of color in just in the museum world, largely just defined. And I think those internships really help our students to see this as a career path. But this week I've just become more and more interested in how we might really capitalize on the educational experience. And so it's not just that our students come and visit the collection, but how do we really maximize this sort of relationship such that it becomes an integral part of their education overall? And that studying in the barn's way was just so impactful for philosophers and all kinds of people. And really thinking about the power and the role of training the imagination and how art is so central to doing that. It seems to me that we should be thinking about an educational program, I think, with more depth to it. And I don't know how we do that in this context. I think the things that we've learned about what we can do virtually opens up some possibilities. We talked often about courses, right? And we've always run into problems with resources, right? But we can figure that out now that we really know that we can use the power of technology to fix some of those things. My people welcome students a little late because it takes a while to get down here from up where we are, right? And that could be a barrier, but I think we can figure that out going forward. So I'd say all that to say that I think that some of the things we've been trying to do together to keep the relationship going have been good efforts. But I think if we revisit the incident, I had just sort of written down what it was that Barnes had told Dr. Bond that he was going to Dewey to talk about. But he basically said he intended to speak with him, that is John Dewey, about his plans to make the resources of the foundation an integral part of Lincoln's educational program. And he said the goal would be to well link it in the foundation into an educational enterprise that has no counterpart elsewhere. That's a tall, huge sort of task and a dream, right? But I think in the way that Tom and I have been trying to really be earnest about moving this forward that we can possibly think of ways to sort of begin to realize that I think in a more profound and impactful way. If we just sort of think about where our two institutions are, what our resources are, what our needs are, and then how do we pull those together to try to realize this particular dream. So that's where I am this week. Tom, I'm curious about how the Barnes Foundation views the benefits of this relationship, right? Like I understand that Lincoln students have this incredible opportunity to learn. What is it that the Barnes is getting out of this relationship? Well, the Barnes derives an enormous benefit from this relationship, right? Well, Lincoln is our priority educational partnership in the academic setting and it is the priority for us. And because it's priority, and because through time this relationship has taken different forms and continues to evolve and as Brenda suggests, it has kept the issues that are important for Lincoln students and faculty top of mind for us, right? And that is very much, I mean, they were top of mind for Dr. Barnes, you know, a century ago and so that relationship has kept them top of mind. That's the first thing. The second thing I think is that particularly through the internship program, so Lincoln students have priority in our internship program, which is, you know, not just about art history. It's not just about curatorial. It's not just about education. It's about the business of culture. It's about all of these things that one can learn working in a non-profit environment. But having the students here, right, they're young. They look very different than some of the people that work here on the staff, right, like most museums, and they bring ideas and a critical perspective and an energy and enthusiasm that really infuses the entire institution. So every summer when I do my, we all do, all of the senior staff do a sort of talk with their conversation with the interns. You know, it's the questions they ask, the ideas they offer, the critiques they share, because, you know, people of this age feel very comfortable, right, speaking truth to power, which is, you know, sometimes off-putting, but ultimately very productive, you know, is incredible. So they bring ideas and a perspective and keep it again, you know, they keep us on our toes. I also think that I think ultimately we think about the Barnes, you know, it's a certain scale operation and so forth. We think about how do we grow our impact without growing our resources? And I think one of the ways we grow our impact is by modeling practices that we can share with other institutions, museums, other educational institutions, and I think if we can forge the right kind of partnership, you know, at long last, because we've talked a lot about how to do this, if we can do it, I also think we can have an impact on the field, on both of our fields, by modeling a practice, a truly progressive practice in relationship. And, you know, TBD, as Brenda points out, we've talked about it a lot, we've tried a few things, we have plenty more things to try, but I think that could have an enormous impact on both of our fields. The integration is interesting that it is something that is always in the foreground, is a really interesting aspect that I think is not always the case. I mean, it's become something that now we are, that institutions are playing catch-up, right? So, I want to go there for a second. And you mentioned that the idea of sort of what the internships can do. So, you know, the moment that ran in this sort of great project of equity and justice in America, one of the changes that has to be made is more representation and power and, you know, decision-making, culture-creating, and sort of every aspect of our society. And that includes spaces that are, that have traditionally, and sort of overwhelming me, been very white and very privileged, and like museums. And that is sort of largely unchanged since Dr. Barnes' day. So, you know, like if you're sort of envisioning, let's say 20 years from now, a generation or from now, you know, how do you, and you touched on this, I think, with this idea of being a model, right? Like how can this relationship sort of push forward that mission of really having different people being the arbiters of culture and in America, in the world? Well, you know, Dr. Barnes was teaching about art in a factory, right? And, you know, so I think the things you said about going to the branch libraries and stuff like that, bringing art to communities in all forms is just a way to expose people to not only the beauty of art, but I think the educational purpose of art in its ability to, I think, train and challenge the imagination has to be central in what we do. So for a place like Lincoln, you know, we might think of the art as only for art majors, or sometimes we think of it as only for the art history course that everyone has to take in order to sort of satisfy a general education requirement. If we really think about how Barnes, how Dewey, and I would believe how Dr. Bond thought about the power of this educational program, what we would be trying to do in 20 years is really pique the imagination of more and more of our students who can then go out into the world and pique the imagination of more and more people in the communities where they come from. And I think because art has always, for many communities, seemed like something that only privileged and entitled people do, and that changes a little bit in the black community when you start to introduce black art, right? And this collection, you know, was one of the first collections to ever have African art in it, becomes really very significant, so becomes the way to really pique the interest. I always tell people, my favorite room is the room with the Picasso and the African sculptures side by side, because it speaks volumes about not even what the pieces are, but that he had the audacity to place those things side by side, really piqued my interest and made me want to think more about what was he thinking, you know, when he did that. And I think that's exactly the feeling he wanted to invoke in people. And so I think if we're able to use the power of that for the students that we serve at Lincoln, you know, we're training or at least introducing to a cohort of people the importance of art. And what do we do with the liberal arts education? We take it out and we put it in a service of other people in our communities. And in that way you begin to just sort of break down the barriers about who art is for. And I think if we talk people about the power of art in the right way, we can begin to understand how we can also use that in the communities where we have done so much to dampen the imagination that we sort of see some of the other progress go away with that. And I think it could be a way to really, I think, sort of validate communities and also where to validate the art that they create as being something worthy of thinking and imagining about as well. Tom, you mentioned when we were talking and I think this speaks to this a little bit that, you know, we talk a lot about differences and Dr. Barnes really talked a lot about what we have in common as humans and his collection reflects that, right? The way the collection is hung and displayed. Can you talk a little bit about that? Sure. I mean, Brenda put her finger on it, right? This is, Barnes wanted it not to be exceptional that African art, African material culture was juxtaposed with and therefore presented to the public as significant, as powerful, as valuable as European modernist painting, for example. He didn't want it to be exceptional and I would, because he didn't think it was, it should be exceptional. I would say the same thing about you were talking about the field. You know, I mean, it shouldn't be exceptional that a museum staff, that every museum staff of any kind of museum look exactly like the real world, which is to say fully diverse. And so our role in that, I think, is to figure out all the different ways that we can as an institution be a pipeline for African American students, undergraduate faculty members to find their ways into these institutions. And those pipelines really don't exist. They still don't exist after all this time. So how do we become that pipeline for students from Lincoln first and foremost? Right. So then, you know, the Barnes can be a launchpad to institutions all over the country. That's a beautiful vision. So we only have a couple of minutes, but I wanted to, you mentioned, I think, you touched on the question I had, which is I'd love to hear a little bit about the art in, what here in the museum particularly is meaningful to you as a piece of art? Or as a room? I told you my favorite room is the Picasso. Tell me, can you just tell me why? Why is that? The Picasso with African sculptures. And so I was fortunate when I did my postdoc at Yale University and took some classes with Robert Ferris Thompson and with Sylvia Boone, who they were great art historians and they studied Africa. So when I go in that room and I see the pieces that Dr. Barnes assembled, it just sort of reminds me of the classes I had there. But when I didn't glance up at the wall and I see a Picasso there, every time I've been taught African art or every time I've been taught art, it's usually in a space where it's either impressionist or European or African or African American. And then you walk in a room like that and it's all there and it really sort of jars you to begin to think about, hmm, how do these things go together? So again, I think it peaks the imagination and makes you want to spend time in there and look at the objects themselves. You start to see some of the similarities, at least for me, I start to see some of the similarities. And I wonder where in Africa did Picasso go because a lot of this stuff looks like it has some West African influence to it, right? And I think that that's what art is supposed to do. But more than just the pieces, the way the pieces are put together in this museum, in and of themselves, peak the imagination. And for me, that room in particular because I had never seen those types of art presented together. And my first time seeing it, it really threw me off. And so every time I come, I go there again because I see something different every time I actually enter that room. Tom, you spent a lot of time here. I'm just, there's something remarkable about Brenda's attachment to this wall, henceforth known as Dr. Alan's Wall. But you know, the African art and teaculture appears, but that's the only place where, I would argue in the entire Barnes Foundation, where Dr. Barnes makes an explicit case for influence, and why does he do that? He wants people who understand and value European modernism to recognize that the source of the innovation of that European modernism is African sculpture. I wasn't too far off. No, no. You're an intuitive. I think it's a really, really powerful thing. That is a remarkable wall for that reason. And he believed that by making that work available and making that sculpture available in that context, he was training, you know, artists he was training, writers and he was training the public at large to value, embrace and try to understand African material culture and what it represents. That's lovely. That seems like a good place to end, unless you have anything you want to add. Stay tuned. Right. Well, I work to do, but we're partners, so we'll be good. Great. Thank you. Thank all of you.