Barnes Foundation

You have to go down to the museum and stand in front of a painting for a little while.

So one of the things that happens a lot, and I fall into this trap all the time, You know, and I lived right down the block from the Barnes Museum in Philadelphia for a few years, you know, and I was a member and I'd go down and, you know, I'd just go down and I'd look at a few Cezannes, you know.

And so Beckett, I talked about Beckett before, you know, he would go to a museum and, you know, somewhere in Germany or whatever, just to see one painting, you know, and he would stand at the painting for like hours and hours and hours, you know, and there's stories about like the gardens and the museums, like who the hell is this guy, you know, just standing in front of that one painting.

That's what Barnes said you should do, really.

But I was able to knock something off my bucket list this weekend, and I am so thrilled that we did it.

There's a place called the Barnes Institute in Philadelphia, and it's now the Barnes Foundation.

And this gentleman has, well, he's dead now, but he's still dead.

Apparently a suspicious single car accident, but be that as it may, he has the largest personal collection of Renoirs.

I went on to teach next to Professor Pond and next to Catherine Regan and Ben Ortiz in the library for the next two or three years.

And that led to an opportunity for me to entertain an opportunity to teach at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, which large thanks to a dear old friend of mine, Jamie Merwin, who was on the inside track there already.

And they were looking for people to teach about Albert Barnes's life because Albert Barnes is largely noted as well.

I wouldn't, I won't even, I take that back.

Sometimes a podcast is just meant to be, and I feel that's the case with Justin Hess and Maria Im.

So I was in Philadelphia at The Barnes Collection, the Barnes Museum, and I happened to run into these individuals.

We were looking at some furniture, um, at the same time, and I was talking about, "Oh, you know, that's, uh, Nakashima," or, "It looks like it's Nakashima." And she said, "Yes, that is.

I just lifted it up, and it's Mira Nakashima." And I go, I go, "I'm going out there to interview Mira, uh, tomorrow." And they go, "Oh my gosh, that's great." And so we talked for a while in the Barnes, and it turns out they're very important people.

In Philly, we have a bunch of van Goghs at the Philadelph- Philadelphia Museum of Art.

I think the Barnes Museum might have some van Goghs as well.

Um, I- I'm gonna be hesitant in how I talk about van Gogh because he did, well, r- say that he killed himself.

He said that he shot himself, and then there's also some other th- ideas that maybe he was shot by someone else.

Oh my God, if Theo lived long, I mean, Jesus Christ, whoever would have the Theo Van Gogh collection would have all of the Vincent Van Goghs and all of the Renoirs.

I mean, it's almost like you got to look up Barnes.

We've got Barnes, the Barnes Museum in Philly.

I am going to hire a tour guide in Philly to go through the Barnes because I've been through the Barnes.

It just sparks something in me, so I'm going.

Then I heard about First Fridays at the Barnes Foundation, one of Philadelphia's iconic art institutions, and I thought, "Oh, I wanna do that." So I texted my friend Sherry Michelle and said, essentially, "I'm going.

Do you guys wanna come?" They did, and I love that, too, because I wasn't sitting around thinking, "Who's gonna invite me somewhere?" Something interested me, I acted on it, and then I invited other people into the experience.

I've gone to events and met somebody who says, "We should have coffee." That was Sima.

Vanity Museums, some of the most memorable on the planet, have been a part of what makes the city's cultural landscape so lively, diverse, and deep.

These institutions belong to a strain of American entrepreneurial individualism that has also given us the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, Donald Judd's Marfa Spaces in Texas, and the Guggenheim in New York.

Go it alone.

Ventures founded on contrarian principles.