 Good morning everybody and welcome. Thank you so much for being here. My name is Martha Lucy. I am deputy director for research, interpretation and education here at the Barnes and hello to everybody tuning in from home. Very excited about our program today. This conversation kicks off a series of conversations called the Barnes then and now, which we have organized as part of our 100th anniversary celebration. Today and in the coming weeks we'll be addressing several aspects of the Barnes Foundation that distinguished it from other art institutions in 1922 and that continue to be central to our identity. The Progressive Education Program, the unconventional installation of the collection, which is the topic for today, and the commitment to social justice. And yet it would be silly to say that nothing has changed in 100 years. We live in a totally different world than the one in which Dr. Barnes built his collection and developed his plan for progressive art education. And so one of the questions that we hope to get at during these conversations is this. How, as an institution, should we honor Barnes's original vision while also being responsive to the complexities of contemporary life and adapting to sort of new practices in the museum field? Nowhere are the Barnes's historical origins more persistent, more solidly represented than in the installation of the collection. Albert Barnes arranged his artworks himself. In the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, and you'll hear more about what his intentions were once we get started. For now, suffice it to say that these arrangements were important to him. So much so that he ordered them never to be changed. Barnes died in 1951. How do I, oh, yeah, that's what I want. Barnes died in 1951, at which point the ensembles were photographed. Documented, sort of a map of their correct order for future generations. Even the move of the collection from Marion outside of Philadelphia to the Parkway, where we are now in 2012, didn't disrupt their order. Each ensemble was meticulously recreated by our conservators and preparators. And so what you're looking at here, and I know you can't, it's not a great slide, but it's a drawing from 2012 made by our conservation team that measures the exact distance between each work of art down to one sixteenth of an inch, so that they could be recreated. So the groupings that you see upstairs are exactly as Barnes left them. They are a snapshot of 1951, and they remain a central part of our identity. Just look at our logo. If you've ever noticed our logo, look at the bottom. Many visitors find the ensembles stimulating. The critic, Peter Scheldahl, described the Barnes as one of the best installations I have ever seen, while others dismiss them as distracting, even maddening. Everyone seems to have a strong opinion, revealing just how loaded museum display can be. What is at stake in the arrangement of things on a wall? What kinds of issues did the ensembles raise during Barnes' time, and what response do they elicit now? What kinds of challenges does this historical presentation present for us? Those of us who work at the Barnes in 2012, as we think about evolving into the future, and perhaps more importantly, what opportunities do these historical installations present? There's no one better suited to pondering these questions today with me than my conversation partner, Dr. Dario Gamboni. Dr. Gamboni is Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at the University of Geneva, and an honorary fellow of the Institut Universitaire de France. In addition to his influential writings on symbolist art and literature, iconoclasm and visual ambiguity, he has published extensively about the history of museums, especially museums created by artists and collectors, and their role in the larger history of museums and artistic expression. He is a beautiful writer, and his books have been translated into many languages. These include the destruction of art, potential images, the brush and the pen, and most recently, the Museum as Experience, an email odyssey through artists and collectors' museums. And in fact, he will be reading from this new book this afternoon here in the auditorium at 1.30. So come back at 1.30, you do not want to miss this. Dario has also written an essay for a book that we are doing at the Barnes. It's going to be published next year, and his essay is called Albert C. Barnes, Display Artist. Dr. Monique Scott, our moderator, is also well-versed in the history of museums and the politics of display. She is Associate Professor of Anthropology and the Director of the Museum Studies Program at Bryn Mawr, as well as a Consulting Scholar for the Africa section at the Penn Museum. And I know that you can always find her in the galleries with her students. They come here for Bryn Mawr students to study the collection and the display of it. She is the author of the book Rethinking Evolution in the Museum, Envisioning African Origins, published in 2007. Her more recent work focuses on the representation of Africa at Philadelphia Museums. I'm grateful to both of you for being here today. I'm looking forward to this conversation. Thank you to Leah Palumbo for her excellent work, organizing everything. And again, thank you for being here. We will have the conversation and then we'll have time for some questions at the end. So let's get started. Great, thank you. And welcome, everyone, looking forward to the conversation today myself. So I think to start, it might be good just to ask, and maybe Dario, you could speak to this. What is the ensemble? What is this installation style that makes the Barnes Foundation and Barnes' approach so unique in 1922? Yes, with pleasure. What we see here and what you see in the rooms, and I guess you're familiar with them, but if not, I don't miss the opportunity, is not really what was there to see in 1922. I think that's quite important to say. And in fact, I'm struck by the fact that one tends to think, we tend to think that it was the case and that it has remained exactly as it was. It has remained as it was when Barnes died. And it's really his death which put an end to what was the process of more or less constant but transformation. And I think that's quite important to try and recover that sort of fluidity, that sort of process. And maybe Alia can show us, right, here we have a detail from a letter which Barnes sent from the ship, by the way. Coming back from one of his shopping sprees in Paris and he had just acquired the Rousseau, the Duanier Rousseau, the tiger in the center. And so he already knew, he had to move things since he had to find room for this new one which was quite important, central position. So he wrote from the ship to his people in Marion and said, well, that's how it should be. And it has been going on like that. But maybe we could see an image of the earliest version that we know and there aren't so many pictures of that. Right, yeah, that's good. Here we see something of the progression around a painting by Renoir which always has the central position as you see. And we see that at the start it was actually very much in line with a progressive kind of modernist kind of display which was pared down, which was only one row or to some extent a bit elements in a second row. Not so many pictures, no or very little ornament, no objects. And it's only progressively, again, that Barnes moved away from that and to some extent back to what had been an earlier type of display, which had been more or less the common type from the 15th to the 18th century. Maybe we can see, Leah, there's an image I used for my essay, that's the first one. It's a painting in which you see what is called the Pendant system, which is a system of display in which you have many pictures on a wall. And now that's not the one. Exactly, thank you very much. Yeah, so that's 17th century. And here you have the actor Clair Paul William in Brussels with his picture gallery. So the pendant display has been in the 20th century disparaged as decorative and as not respecting the individuality of works, but it was actually very meaningful. It was a way of organizing pictures according to genre, schools, subject matter, color scheme and so on. And so as to make comparisons possible. And Barnes went back to something like that for various reasons, we can discuss them. He did not say much about that, but he went back to that and then at some point introduced what people find particularly strange, which is the decorative arts and especially the ironwork, but maybe we can come back to that later. Can you go to, I'm not sure how to make this. Yeah, can you go to one of the Barnes ensembles? I think anyone will do, yes, because the metalworks are in every gallery. So as Daria has shown with that series of photographs showing kind of the evolution of the ensembles, the walls sort of filled out as Barnes collected. And what I find so kind of fascinating about the letter that he writes from the ship with the diagram of how exactly okay he's writing. This is how it's going to be. He's writing to his staff. He has in his head exactly how he remembers how everything is. He's got it all memorized, probably every room. So he was, you know, sometimes you'll hear these that the walls described as, oh, they're just the sort of haphazard arrangement. He's just putting things sort of wherever they fit. And it's all about the size of them and it is right. He the symmetry. There's always sort of a corresponding image on either side of that central axis. But but he is absolutely meticulous in designing these things. And so the the metalworks come in in the 1930s. And I want to talk about why that is and what he's trying to do. So what's your interpretation of that, Daria? So one striking aspect also maybe to hear is that he does not a group works according to chronology or schools, which mean geography. That's quite striking here, of course, with these medieval works around the large Renoir picture, which means that there are other common elements which he finds more important. In fact, he wanted also to some extent it was about demonstrating that modern works were at the height of the older works. And for him, something very important was tradition or traditions in the plural. As a scientist, he considered that art, like science, is cumulative. It's not a tabula raza. Every each artist does not start from scratch, but on the contrary builds upon what others have made before. And to him, he also wanted to visualize what he regarded as these traditions. And I want to interject something here because I think that that that point is so important for understanding what he's doing in these ensembles. And he's doing a lot of different things. It's about his educational philosophy, but it's also about his desire to make an argument about modernism. Because when he was collecting the teens, 20s, but especially during those early years, the artists that he was collecting, like Matisse, Soutine, Picasso, critics, you know, American audiences were not ready for these artists, and they were ridiculed in the press. And you had many critics saying things like this is a complete rejection. This is the downfall of civilization. These artists are, you know, have no respect for tradition. And it's this total jettisoning of our, you know, great history. And Barnes was saying, no, that is not that's not true. This is a new, this is a sort of new expression of that tradition. And you can see the links between an artist like Matisse and like, I don't know, Tintoretto. And so part of what these walls are is sort of an argument for modernism as a continuation of tradition. Can I also ask about Barnes in relation to other collectors at that time? I know that, and you've written Dario, that Barnes is a sort of collector's museum, but he kind of cast dispersions on other sort of millionaire's collections, particularly those in New York or Philadelphia. What are the some of the things that made his collecting and what he was producing for? Also, we have to underscore that it was he was producing this for for the Barnes in Marion, which was an educational institution and not a museum. But what do you, what do you think some of his, how he would see himself aside from other collectors in these periods? So maybe we could show, Aliya, you could show a picture of a millionaire's collection. Yeah. What he exactly, thank you very much. The Vanderbilt Picture Gallery. So, Barnes was to some extent, I mean, he had managed, he came from a working class, but he managed to have an excellent education and studied medicine and chemistry, but he was interested in psychiatry and psychology, and he was very well read. As far as aesthetics concerned, he was self-taught to some extent, but came in contact with great people. As a collector, he really decided himself, and I think that's a very important aspect, and he disparaged millionaire's collections as representing the taste of the advisors and of the dealers. So these people, they don't choose themselves, they have people to tell them what they should buy, and they follow fashion or the price and so on. Whereas his collection, he was intent, at first he sent Glecans, the artist he knew to buy in Paris, but then very quickly he bought himself, he chose himself. And he wrote that a collection, in the sense that he meant, is a portrait of the collector, and is as individual as the person's face or something like that. He expressed that in a very interesting way. So it's a sort of representation also of the person, but the commerce, the living with the works to him was absolutely crucial. And indeed he understood and defined his collection or his institution, his foundation as an educational institution and not a museum. He also wrote that it was a place to do research on art by means of the works themselves, which is also a very interesting way to think. But there's also in the first article he published, and I took the quote because I find it's very beautifully expressed, he says something about living with works, which I think is quite, let me find it. Exactly, it's in 1915. He evokes the pleasure of living with works of art, I quote, as friends, children, objects of worship, diversions, serious mental occupations. And he praises the elasticity with which paintings stretch to the beholder's personal vision, which they progressively develop. So it's really this sort of interaction with the works, and which as you said means he had everything in mind also when he was away, which I think is something also that he wanted to transmit. And that's I think one of the great virtues of such a place is that it is meant for repeating and prolonged contemplation. It's meant not to take once and then it's done, but to come back to spend time and each time you discover something new. So you can enjoy something of that sort. So I'm also thinking, and as we shift perhaps to thinking about the legacy of Barnes and the 1951 installation. So there are a few things that we probably all know that make it unique, certainly the ensembles that we've been talking about I'm also interested in the ensembles in relationship to like installations that come up in contemporary art like mixing like your exhibition in the order of things where artists are intentionally creating meaning by remixing objects in a way. But I'm also interested in kind of the legacy of other aspects such as I'm very interested in African art in the collection that inclusion, and also the lack of labels. And it was an educational foundation and not a museum, but now many visitors are coming through and viewing seeing it as a museum, especially here on the parkway. And I guess I'm generally intrigued in how the Barnes installation has survived the times or gone in and out of fashion with the times. And yeah, many aspects there but maybe Martha you could speak to some of the, you spoke to them briefly but some of the responses you received when you were doing the that fantastic exhibition order of things, different perspectives. I think that the challenge of this conversation is that there's so much to talk about. I don't even know where to start and that's a great question there's a lot in there. And I think that a lot of people in the audience probably know a lot about these installations but I think that we need to just remind people what what they're doing and what Barnes is doing and what's unique about them. And in very in a sort of very basic way. He is he is breaking from what was then a traditional way of displaying art which is by time period by medium by school and showing a sort of evolution of the history of art right so he is mixing together and and and drawing your attention more to forms the forms that connect things so colors lines and it was a very it was meant to be a sort of very democratic way of approaching art because if you think about it. All you need as some as a as a as a student of his is is your eyes. You don't need to know about history or classical history you just need to be able to look and all of the knowledge is within the the work of art itself. And so it's a very sort of beautiful and democratic and sort of utopian idea. But as as Monique sort of alludes to it does create challenges for us now, as well as opportunities but one of the challenges is. Okay, so you've got these things the focus is on the visual and on looking. So there are no didactics on the walls. And we're going to look at how these African masks relate to, you know that the paintings or even the objects on the case above it you're supposed to look at the relationships between everything. But what about the objects themselves. What about their original contexts. Barnes is putting them into this context and kind of making new meanings for them. What about their original meanings and what the what the artists intended. That's the sort of thing that we struggle with here. And I must say that I find and I've, I've, I've visited the barns many times and taken students many times and I think it's possible to shift your one's own response to the display there's despite it seeming static I see I do see it in new ways. Each time and I do think that there's something remarkably democratic in in perhaps not being over like curated or over told what these what these objects are represent there is something fresh about that I can, you know, I can also see. I'll turn it other reasons of, of, of challenging that perhaps with African art, but it is, it's. Yeah, but and, and, and I, and I agree with that. It is, it is fresh. And there, and it's just sort of like right with with possibilities for for the visitor or for the student. You make your own meanings right, but we also want to be careful because we have you know because we want to bring in new research, what we know about these objects where they came from how they were used and so how do we do that without disrupting what barns intended. And what we're what we've done is we've started using technology. So you can use, you can use an app that we have and pull up that kind of what you would expect in a more traditional museum, you know, the kind of the text information. But you don't have to if you don't want it so it's it's we really try to leave it up to the visitor or the student to sort of experience these these walls, the way that they want to. If I can add something I think it's to me to my eyes it's rather an advantage that they have to be kept physically separate that is there's there's no room for adding a lot of labels and information and you could drown any of these works. And the way it evolved that has been rated about it and you might wish to know about them would make no sense. So the fact that it has to be separate is rather a good thing and there's a case to be made for permanence. Which is not a conservative thing necessarily. I mean, Donald Judd, for instance, pleaded very strongly for permanence and it's a rare thing in museums because most displays disappears and are replaced constantly. And there are a few places it's not the only one. You may know the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, for instance, and or the John Sones Museum in London. So there are a few of these places which which their their their creators by means often of their will managed to keep beyond their death as they were. And I think it has great virtues in particular and that sounds paradoxical. As you say, the way of seeing changes, the interest change and so on, but to have something that stays the same make it even more possible actually. And we change each time we go to such a place we will we find something different we look for something we are changed by it and we change it in our perception. So I say that because very often when I explained that I was working on that sort of museums. People would say including colleagues would would have a sort of horrified reaction say oh this is horrible this place that do not change. It's like a cemetery and but it's so unreflexive. In fact, it's a sort of stereotype of cliche. And so I think it's great that there are a few again a few of these places. I'm curious how your students respond to the call. Well there've been a myriad of ways that it's not a response but something I can share and again coming at this I'm not an art historian. I'm an anthropologist who's interested in the history of African art and representations of Africa in museums and I've traditionally worked with ethnographic museums and natural history museums. And I will say that I found it again really like refreshing when I moved to Philadelphia and came upon the barns and learned about this history. So we're we're we're in a moment now. We have been in these moments in the past where kind of racial politics are at the fore museums are confronting this in various ways and particularly around blackness. After after black lives matter all museums and all cultural institutions are thinking, hopefully, about how they're representing race and culture and so I have found a most recent experience that I can share is that I brought students a couple weeks ago to see the phenomenal Isaac Julian show here at the museum which was just right up my and our alley of interest and and powerful pointed and beautiful. And I took students there this was the day the museum was closed and we had this, you know, kind of very powerful reverent experience there. And I, and then we had a conversation I said, Well, you know, the museum is open do you want to take these are this was a predominantly black students and note none of them had been to the foundation. And I said, Do you want to go take a look in the in the main gallery and when they went into the main gallery they described it as sort of being an assault of whiteness. These were the Renoir nudes that many, you know, many people come for, but it is a perspective I've heard from other students and it may be generational maybe for student because of students of color. And it's interesting in terms of the Barnes method because even with encouraging students that the way that you're supposed to experiences this is form and lines in color. And you know you don't need previous knowledge but people are coming in with previous experience so there is sort of a attention there. And it's great when it's there's a mediator there's a Barnes educator or there's a, you know, someone that is guiding visitors through. But yes, no it's, it's been an interesting. It's interesting learning seeing the ways of seeing. Yes, and we, I mean what you describe is, is some is a challenge that we have, you know, with our, with our school groups. We have a lot of students like young, young learners of color who are coming to this museum. This is not a museum, this institution or maybe to a museum in general for the first time. And, you know, they're not seeing themselves represented in the collection and that and we are very aware of that and it's a problem. But what we do, the only thing that we can really do to, since we can't, you know, add new works into the, into the installation. I mean, we can't collect contemporary African American artists and sort of insert them where they might, you know, be interesting. We talk about it we just sort of talk explicitly about it and we say that this is an historical installation. And, you know, it's a collection that shows mostly works by European white men. And I want to add here and then I'd ask you Dario question is that also, you know, one of the things I was fascinated by learning about Barnes is his care and interest in the black community in Philadelphia that is, you know, it's, it's remarkable about him. And the way that and Dario you've written about this but the way that he, his method was very intentionally democratic for for workers and the common, the common man. And I've been, I've been struggling with the, he was doing so much for for working class communities, the black community. And I think you mentioned that he saw his the like primitivism or the inclusion of African art objects as as perhaps a part of this commitment but yet also appreciating the work of masters that are, you know, also predominantly white or European It's an interesting complexity to Barnes's character that I was wondering if you can speak more to. Yes. Well, I think indeed he was remarkably, I would say progressive and and for him the democratic impulse and intention was was crucial. So he started by hanging some of the works that he collected in the factory, which produced the medicament that made him rich, which by the way was meant to avoid the to newborn children might get blind because of venereal disease received through the mother. So there is this element of helping to see I mean the question I've seen is absolutely crucial. So he started by hanging works in the factory and also giving time to his workers for reading and for looking at the works. And then he created these educational programs and it was easier to come in the collection actually as a black worker than it was an art historian or an artist often. And there are many stories about that and he wrote incredible refusal letters for people who wanted to come in signed by his dog. So he was quite a quite a character, but and for him music was very important also and black music was very important. And so, so of course, he also understood African art as a sort of foundation for modern art and it's something. So in a sense that we now regard as primitivists. So of course that's not the way we would see it now. And he was not so much interested in what was produced then possibly in Africa was rather looking for older, older art. So all of this should be discussed. Nonetheless, he was an early one, especially in this country to show that kind of respect for these objects as works of art and for their authors and for whom they represented also in terms of community. So I think that's something that must be recognized. And, and he found in them values which he regarded as absolutely crucial and of the highest quality. Maybe one should also say you said, mostly at European art from by white men, I would add to that that he considered that art in Europe and especially French art was really the most progressive. So for him, this was where art was going and should be going and he found it important to bring that also in this country, especially for artists. But it's actually very inclusive because you have some art by children, you have a lot of so called popular art. So for him when he included the older so called decorative or applied arts by for instance, Pennsylvania Dutch and so on for him that was art also and it's not there as decoration. It's not there as no it's part of the collection. It's presented at the same with the same kind of respect and as belonging to the sphere. So I think that's also something that needs to be acknowledged, appreciated and taken seriously. If we focus only on the paintings by Renoir and Cezanne, it's our problem. It's not necessarily. Yeah, I mean, that's that's that's crucially important. And when somebody asked him in a letter, you know, why are you hanging these these these hinges on the same wall with a Matisse or with a Renoir and he said, the people who made these things are every bit as authentic as artists as Renoir, Titian, Cezanne. And there is something really sort of, of course, democratic about that and it's also the fact that he's hanging all of these things on in the same space. I mean, yes, it's often the European artists paintings that get centered. Maybe it's because they're so big, but but they are on the same wall. And and I think that you can also sort of read it as a metaphor for his desire to break down, you know, class hierarchies. Maybe we could since we speak of the ironwork and I think that intrigues more or less everyone, maybe we could show a detail one of the details I think that I have included. Yes, for instance, this one. So I think indeed, this has been people have been a bit baffled by this inclusion, especially the ironwork for for quite a while. And there is this letter and now I read the letters this week in the archive. Actually, Stuart Davis, who is not represented in the collection, who would have liked to be represented, wrote to he wanted to see the collection first. And and he, I don't know whether he ever could, but in any case, at first he did not receive an answer or he received an answer by secretary saying we received too many of that sort of request and we can't and that's about it. So of course he was a bit and he replied, although he had explained his connections with Philadelphia all the good reasons he had for wanting to visit the collection. So, but he again replayed very politely and at some point she wrote to Barnes and said he had seen picture photographs that's all he could see of the collection said there's something he found strange. And this was exactly the ironwork. And to that bounce replies, okay, there are two reasons. One is that these are these the authors of these objects are every bit as great artists as the painters. But the other reason is that he says one finds in them the same compositions as in the paintings. And so, looking at that and thinking about it, I came, I eventually proposed to call them ready made eye openers. That's an expression that I use, meaning that indeed if for instance you compare because it's always about comparison. So you see the, the piece that is on top of the dimorph ship, indeed points out the structural composition with the mast and the rigs and so on. And it can, and it contrasts with the curves of this strap hinge that is above the Mattis nude, which is all about all about curves. And if you start looking at these things and indeed, they make sense. And, and they are a bit a sort of equivalent to the compositional analysis that were very popular at the time you have these drawings where you emphasize the structure the skeleton if you wish of a of a painting. But to some extent ready made because he did not make them. Although, and if you start looking at them, you'll find out that sometimes he brings together three, four, five pieces, which have been of course detached also from the furniture to which they were that originally they have been deprived of the color they might have had they have been transformed a lot. So, some of them are really assemblages. So it could be compared to Picasso's bullhead, for instance, or other work. And the author, of course, is bands, but in a sense, in disguise. I mean, he does not, he does not enter the stages of an artist, but he acts very much as, as one. Yeah, that's one such example. So I have to say when you start looking at that it's a lot of fun also. It's not the only aspect of it, but it's one. I think there's also some humor. He's generally regarded as very serious and person, but I think he also had some human. I think there's some humor too. Leah, could you go back to that last one that we had up with that? Yeah. And, and, and, you know, the more you look at these, the more you will see connections between the works. I mean, yes, you can see that the sort of curve of the metalwork and how it sort of echoes the curve of the nude. But look also at the grid on the, on the cabinet, and the sort of grid in the, in the painting on the left and even in the, the D myth on top. And so it's sort of, you know, it, it, I think the question is, okay, well, why, why do we care about that. And I think the answer to that is that in sort of trying to do these comparisons and find the kind of analogies, it really makes you look and spend time and look closely. And there's something really, really valuable about that. And so it's, you know, it's not, it doesn't just have to be about like, okay, and I'm an art historian. So I really care about history and social context and historical context for works of art. But while I might like normally be interested in, you know, the sort of what was happening at the time that this landscape on the left was making, was made. You know, that doesn't always matter. It's valuable to be able to, to learn how to see which is which is how Barnes and Demesia described it and you can take that skill and apply it in so many different areas of your life. Taking a view of applying it in many areas of your life. I think it's time to I'm looking for a gig, you know, on a panel. Let's see. I am wondering if anyone has questions. I think we have a Yeah, and you do have to make sure you there's a speak into the microphone so that the people at home can hear. Could you comment about the rigorous symmetry and what he's trying to do with the sizes and also what's the content of the pictures are symmetric. Yeah. So the actual symmetry is quite typical of this earlier type of display, which as I said has been really mainstream from the 15th to the 18th century, the pendant system. Maybe we can go back to that again, either to one of the big ensembles views or the picture that I showed of this princely gallery. And it is a principle of organization that make it that makes it possible to it pairs things right so you have one in the in the well that's good. Thank you. So you have clearly one central piece which and things are organized around it and then you have in the middle of one half you have another vertical picture and the same on the right side and then it's surrounded by two horizontal both and by the way in that case they are all landscapes and so on and so forth. And so the one individual work can both be the pair the pendant of another one on on the same part of the wall or on the other side of the wall and so on and so forth. So it's really an organization organizational principle, which is very effective and it's been used by many by many many collectors and I would say display artists if you wish the music come on though in Paris for instance is even in the case of come on It's quite interesting because he was so much in aim at with pendants including in the object so vases and things like that that we know that dealers would create the ones that were missing because they knew he was looking for them. So that's as far as I know it's not the case with by example. I want to ask you a question. So there is there's a precedent for this and and yes the axial symmetry and what what does Barnes do differently though. Well he brings in things that as you see I mean it extends if you take the lower level, the symmetry principle is completely active and you have two chairs and you have the endurance and you and so on and so forth. So the the what he puts together is relatively unusual. I mean especially the iron work is totally unusual. That's really I went to the Mercer Museum this week. I hope you have visited it, which is, I mean, so I'm convinced that he had seen it and that he must have been. That's the same. I thought the same right. Right, but had a relationship. Did they not? There's Mercer does not appear in the correspondent. He went to visit a museum in Rouen, the Musée Le Sec des Tournelles. There was a great show here about that. And which is completely dedicated to iron work. And so that was one of his models, but I can't imagine that he did not visit the Mercer Museum. Anyway, this is organized much more strictly and coherently. So I think that is really but but the use of bilateral symmetry. That's I would not say that's banal. I mean, but you find it a lot a lot of collectors do that and also not just collectors. I mean curators did that. But of course, as I said, museum displays in public museums, they change. I mean, it's they don't stay and sometimes they are documented, not so much. And I hope I think that's a great thing with the with the balance is that the question of and some has been put in the front. And so it really, I think it has quite also that's also an educational virtue to make people realize how important the context changes the constituent parts. It informs the individual works. Medium is the message. Okay, another question. Hi. First, I want to thank you all for putting this together. Every bit of it has been fascinating and I feel frustrated that I need to pick my best question. But I wanted to know if there are pieces from the collection that are in storage and so they're not part of the installation. And I don't know is there a van Gogh sitting in a basement somewhere that we don't get to see. I'm going to ask Cindy Kang, who is our associate curator to help me answer this question. But yes, there are objects in storage. None of them are van Gogh's. I would I think it's safe to say that the, you know, the best things are on view, but we do have can't remember how many do you remember how many objects we have in storage. Yeah, no, we have about in terms of European art, we have about 100 paintings in storage. We have a lot of American art in storage. And I think this also speaks to what Dario was saying before, was that the ensembles were not static. Like the things in storage were in the ensembles at one point when Barnes was alive, like our five suitains in storage would rotate in and out of the collection of the on the walls. So it is kind of artificial. What I think it's really important to remember that this is artificial. I loved what Dario said in the beginning is that we have to keep on thinking about the ensembles, rediscover them as as process and as fluidity. I think that's that was a big takeaway for me. We had a very small question to that. The Southwest Amerindian pottery that is in the room just there. Where were they? They are quite interesting, by the way. So, but where were they before when he died? Let's say the Southwest objects. Yes. So they were always in a case. Well, not always. They were in a case on the lower level when he died. They were before that they were used in the curriculum. They were also used. They were also in the what what became objects conservation, but was like the shop. The fact I mean the, the, not the shop isn't the gift shop, but the shop as in like the wood shop area where where conservation also worked. So yes, and then some of them are in the ensembles. But yes, the reason why they are in the lower level case there is because they were in a lower level case in Marion. So there's discussion on that. I've recognized, but I find it's also quite important and interesting. This is just to add a little bit. This, this, this idea of barns moving things around. There was an article, there was like a profile of him written. I think it was in 1928. And the New Yorker called D'Medici and Marion. And, you know, because there's a lot of sort of fascination and curiosity about this man who was building this collection and there was all this mystery. But there's this description of him as, you know, it says something like he would, he would wake he would get when he couldn't sleep at night. He would go over to his galleries, like in his, in his pajamas. And, and start thinking about rearranging the collection. So it was something that he was just always thinking about that they were, and Dario has made this argument. So beautifully, you know, they were, they were his works of art. I have a question from online. To what extent did Dr Barnes see his mode of presentation as related to the nature of the modernist works themselves. I think of Brock's seminal quote, objects don't exist for me, except in so far as rapport exists between them and between them and myself. Can you read the quote from Brock again. Objects don't exist for me, except in so far as rapport exists between them and between them and myself. I mean, I think that that's, I think that, I mean, that's, that's a really nice question. I think that it's, I think if I'm understanding it correctly, it's about the, the, the meaning that is made in the process of, of interpretation by, by the, by the viewer. How do you I would, I think it is, it expresses a relational understanding about that is it's not about the individual works, but they exist always in relationship with something else with other works and with the spectator. I think that does correspond to Barnes's notion and it's always striking when reading him to see how versed he was in psychology. He was a great reader, William James, who was of course very influential, but so the psychology of perception comes from there. And he writes and also his collaborator, Mary Mullen, who wrote a very useful, by the way, sort of very short handbook early on. They insist that, that the act of perception, the, the, the beholder's shape you wish is just as creative as the artist. So to that extent, I would say, yes, I think you could say it, it corresponds to or it agrees with some aspects of modernism in its art theory. However, in the standard or mainstream or dominant type of display associated with modernism, I'm thinking of what has been connected with the model that Alfred H. Bar Jr. established at MoMA in New York and that became what became known as the white box. It's not the case at all. On the contrary, the accent is on the individual work as much space, it becomes complete, anathema to have a second role, and there must be ever more space for between the works so that you can encounter one work at a time. So that's a completely different understanding and the notion of putting things together and their interrelationships and so on comes back with the criticism, the critique of the white box. And with the rediscovery of the Wunderkammer and Cabinet of Curiosities that comes later, that's in the 70s, 80s, and that makes it, again, look modern. And as you said, so and it can go away and come back and if all goes well, these cycles might continue for some time. Well, unfortunately, part of my role is to keep us on time and it is noon, but thank you so much, Martha and Dario for this fantastic conversation and thanks to the audience. Thank you everybody.