A Working-Class Guide to the Barnes Foundation: An Introduction to the Ideas That Inform the Collection

In A Working-Class Guide to the Barnes Foundation, Jay Raymond explains, for the first time in plain language, the aesthetic theory and practice native to the Barnes Foundation as developed by Albert Barnes and his colleague, Violette de Mazia. Their method relies on the observer’s intellectual and emotional responses to the object, or work of art, itself. Raymond demonstrates the practice through analysis of several paintings in the Foundation's collection.

Raymond, who passionately advocated against the collection’s move from its original home in Merion, PA to its current Philadelphia location, describes the significant differences between the experience of visiting Merion and Philadelphia. Through the application of Barnes's method, Raymond elucidates how those differences alter the aesthetic power and educational value of the collection.

A Working-Class Guide to the Barnes Foundation also provides a necessary corrective to those who see Barnes as merely a wealthy eccentric. Raymond promotes the priorities of education and democracy that shaped the Foundation. He offers a unique and clear-eyed perspective on the institution and man as well as the role of and rewards from seeing art in everyday life.