First the factual error: Matisse's "Joy of Life" or "Bonheur de Vivre" is relatively small easel painting from 1906, owned by Barnes, but not a mural commissioned specifically for his house. The mural is the much later "The Dance II."

Second: Tsien and Williams are architects who design buildings that almost always disappoint in person, mainly because they waste a lot of space, often devoting it to vast and confusing circulation spaces. The Hunter Science Center at Emma Willard feature a long, useless right-angled courtyard. The Folk Art Museum's well-like central atrium eats up more space than the galleries, and is particularly daunting for the musicians whose sound is swallowed up at the weekly Friday concerts. Unfortunately, their inventive use of materials, which I admire as much as Witold, cannot make up for this serious flaw.

The criticism heaped on the giant light cantilever, the classrooms, and the generally confusing layout by both Witold and Niccolai suggest that they are up to their old tricks. This makes them a particularly poor choice for the architects of the Barnes Foundation, because the charm of the original building was the way everything was crammed together: the walls covered in paintings that allowed for the wacky and inventive juxtapositions of form. Space was carefully used, because there wasn't much of it to begin with and Barnes wanted each space to mesh coherently with the art it contained.

I'm not even sure why the foundation bothered to keep the original arrangements of art. The idiosyncratic, radical formalism that drove Barnes to set up the collection as he did has has long been out of fashion, after formalism dead-ended with Clement Greenberg in the late 50s. The original arrangement is only instructive as a historical artifact, i.e. as the window into the mind of a particular American art collector operating in a particular era. The context of the house itself was essential for this. If we're going to drown Barnes' collection in the vast, confusing spaces of Williams and Tsien, we can stop pretending that we've done something wonderful or important by keeping the original arrangement of the art.

Wasn't keeping the original arrangement of the paintings in the new bldg a concession (or perhaps a requirement?) in order to get Lincoln U to allow the collection to be moved?

So is the suggestion that Matisse's mural, Joy of Life, which Barnes commissioned especially for his building, is to be separated from the central hall for which it was created. Why not leave well enough alone?

OK, so it's the wrong name. But is the mural on canvas that actually can be separated from the hall? I wonder if there is a similar place especially created for it in the new bldg.

Despite the complaints of several (inc you), is this version of the new museum a done deal, or might it still be revised?

Hi MaryAnn,

Good questions. The mural is on canvas, I believe. And I think my correction needs a correction. Its called "Dance Heroique." "Dance II" dates from 1910 and is one of those paintings of nudes dancing in a circle. Here's an interesting Time article from 1933 on the mural. As it suggests, the mural was designed to specifically play off the garden seen from the windows beneath it. So even though it will be moved to a similarly shaped wall in the new collection, it will not be the exact same context.

Of course keeping the art in the original arrangement was a concession in getting the deal done. My point was the concession is trivial, because once you move it from the context of the Barnes mansion, the original arrangement no longer has as much power. Its an interesting way to look at the art, but its rooted in Barnes' formalist notions that discount everything in a painting except shape, color, and line. For Barnes, forms in one painting could find cousins in an adjacent painting by a totally unrelated artist. Frames and decorative objects were also meant to create visual links with each other and the paintings. In my earlier post, I suggested that the art would be swallowed in the Tsien and Williams spaces, which I guess is also technically wrong, because the galleries will be the same proportions as the rooms of the Barnes mansion. But unless they share the same mouldings, door frames, etc., some of Barnes' game will be lost, because the visual patterns he was creating took those into account. I can't imagine that Tsien and Williams will include Classical mouldings in the galleries (I haven't actually seen any renderings of the interiors of the galleries themselves, although all I've found is the 8 images that accompany the NY Times review). It would create the same glaring incongruity between traditional interior and ultra-modern exterior that mars Meier's Getty acropolis.

And again, I think the arrangements of the art is more interesting from an art historical perspective for what it says about Barnes and how great art was consumed by the very rich people who collected it than it does about the art itself. This is an interesting lesson, but it makes more sense in Barnes' actual house than in a Tsien and Williams box, no matter how textured the limestone that sheaths it.

I've been to the Barnes three times and never liked the arrangement of art. It didn't help me "see" anything except that the paintings were symmetrically arranged. Plus, in the grand foyer (or whatever it was called) many of the paintings were too high up to be able to look at them for any length of time. And what about that great Matisse hung in a staircase???!!!

And again, I think the arrangements of the art is more interesting from an art historical perspective for what it says about Barnes and how great art was consumed by the very rich people who collected it than it does about the art itself.

The two major art museums here in Baltimore are heavily indebted to particular collectors. The Balto Museum of Art has a great Matisse collection donated by the Cone sisters, who were friends of Gertrude Stein and her brother. The Walters Art Museum is primarily the collection of Henry Walters and his son.

In both museums, one room is done up in the period of the collector. Most all the other rooms are typical museum rooms. It would have been nice if the new Barnes had (only) one room decorated like the old Barnes and let it go at that.

And what about that great Matisse hung in a staircase???!!!

I just re-read the corrected article. Apparently the "Joy of Life" in the staircase is what will be moved. The article now says nothing about those murals with the rounded tops that can be seen in the photo attached to the article.