 Hi everybody, welcome to another barns takeout. My name is Kailin Jewel. I am senior instructor in adult education at the Barnes Foundation and I wanted to spend a few minutes talking with you guys about. An object that is up on the second floor on the balcony and it's this object right here. And one of the things that's really lovely about being on the balcony, those of you who've been to the Barnes Foundation is that it provides a really good view of Matisse's really magnificent dance mural painting that is up in the main gallery kind of positioned over the windows of the main gallery and you can see it right here and here. And when we are looking at the balcony, there are or we're standing on the balcony, I should say there are all kinds of different objects and this gives us again another sense of Dr. Barnes as a collector, not just of great modern paintings like we see with the Matisse mural in the background or with this really great mural tapestry here, but also a guy who was interested in all kinds of different things like all of this great furniture. We've got these textiles. We've got these Pennsylvania German chests. We've got some medieval objects like we have right here and here. And then we also have this wooden object and let's zoom in so we can see it a little bit better. And this wooden object here is another example of Dr. Barnes's interest in African art. So let's look at a closer view of it. Here we go. Let's zoom in a little so we can see a little bit better. And this is a wooden door. It is positioned on the balcony in that central position in the central one of those kind of architectural spaces, those arches on the balcony. And it's a wooden door covered in different carvings with some pigment added to it. It's carved on both sides. So we can see on the other side here. And it's an object that Dr. Barnes, our founder, particularly loved. So here's a great photograph of Dr. Barnes. And this gives you a sense of scale. You can see him leaning and sort of putting his hand on the upper corner of this door. And what's really great about the door is that it's carved on both sides. We've got this little square down here. And I'll show, I'll go back to a larger view of it in a second. But this square right here in the center is, there's a hole at the middle of it. And that is for the handle that would have originally been there. So I like to show this photograph, this archival photograph of Dr. Barnes to give you guys a sense of how Dr. Barnes felt about this object. This is something that was made in the 19th century, late 19th or maybe early 20th century. It comes from the Ivory Coast of Sub-Saharan West Africa. And it is an object that Barnes loved so much that he had elements of it put onto the outside of his original gallery out in Marion in Pennsylvania. So when we look at the front of it, we can see here that we've got a really great sense of design. We've got all kinds of different creatures on here. The main element of it, kind of at the center is this mask like motif. We've got a couple of birds here. Let's zoom in to those birds. You can see that they've got long beaks, big tails, little feet that seem to be perched on the horns of this mask. And if we go down, you can see just below the chin of the mask is a little hole and that hole corresponds to the hole on the other side that I showed you in that archival photograph of Dr. Barnes. And if we keep going down, we can see that we've got a crocodile. That's what that is. It's a crocodile that seems to have two heads, one body and four legs and two tails down at the bottom. There's been a lot of discussion by art historians and specialists who work on objects from this culture. And this was made by the ballet peoples. Again, they live in the modern day Ivory Coast. And when we see this double head here, it's possible that what we are looking at is a profile view of these crocodiles. So perhaps it's meant to the artist here meant to represent, was intending to represent, two crocodiles kind of their belly is sort of put together and we're looking at them from the side, which is really interesting. Let's look at the original gallery in Marion Pennsylvania for just one moment. And I want to draw your attention to the area here of the entryway. And the original building was constructed in the 1920s to house Dr. Barnes's art collection, as many of you all know, and I'm sure that there are many of you watching who've been to the original building and maybe took classes there, saw works of art hanging in the really beautiful galleries there. And if we look at a detail of the tile work that is present around the entryway out in Marion, you can see that we've got the same figure here. We refer to this as the ballet figure. And so we've got that same double headed crocodile, the same mask, the same birds and the geometric motifs here. This motif was so important to Dr. Barnes, it really served as the kind of mascot or the symbol of the Barnes Foundation for many, many years. And it was so important to him and to the foundation that when the new building was constructed on the Parkway, it was included. And it's something that I like to point out to people and not everybody notices it. But the next time that you guys come to the Barnes Foundation, and you're walking into the building or perhaps you're leaving the building, keep an eye out for and so this is a photograph of the part of the entryway to the building on the Parkway. And you look for this metal wall here. And the architects did something really amazing with this. And if we look at a closer view, you can see here, we'll zoom in. The architects chose to have that ballet figure etched into this metal plate so we can see the birds at the top. We can see that mask. And we can see that's kind of hard to see, but you can get a sense that that double headed crocodile is there. So if we return back to the balcony level of the Barnes Foundation on the Parkway, we are seeing this setup just as Dr. Barnes had it in his galleries out in Marion. And just as the ballet figure in the ballet door was important to Dr. Barnes out in Marion, it was it's still essential to the Barnes Foundation on the Parkway. So when you guys come back to the Parkway to the building and we all get to go through the galleries again, keep an eye out for this really fabulous ballet door made in the 19th century coming from the modern day Ivory Coast. It's a really, really fabulous object and one that has a lot of meaning to the foundation. Thanks for joining me today. Be sure to check out more Barnes Takeouts and subscribe. And we also love it when you all comments down below. All right, take care. Thank you. I'm Tom Collins, New Bauer Family Executive Director of the Barnes Foundation. I hope you enjoyed Barnes Takeout. Subscribe and make sure your post notifications are on to get daily servings of art. Thanks for watching and for your support of the Barnes Foundation.