Conversation | The Barnes Then and Now—Close Looking at the Education Program
Channel: Barnes Foundation
Date: 2022-09-29

The Barnes Then and Now conversation series brings together scholars and cultural leaders to reflect on the state of the Barnes 100 years after our founding.

This dialogue features Rika Burnham, former director of education at the Frick Collection, New York, and Bill Perthes, Bernard C. Watson Director of Adult Education at the Barnes, discussing the objective method of looking at art developed by Albert Barnes and Violette de Mazia almost 100 years ago. What is this method, and is it still relevant today? How does it relate to contemporary theories of visual literacy? Moderated by museums scholar Monique Scott. 

Speakers
Rika Burnham is a leading theorist and practitioner of art museum gallery teaching and a lecturer at Columbia University, New York. She previously served as head of education at the Frick Collection, New York, and project director for the Teaching Institute in Museum Education at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She coauthored the book Teaching in the Art Museum: Interpretation as Experience (Getty, 2011), which won a PROSE Award for best education book from the Association of American Publishers.

William Perthes is the Bernard C. Watson Director of Adult Education at the Barnes. He has taught courses at the Barnes as well as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and West Chester and Villanova Universities. His scholarship focuses on American modernism and the abstract expressionist painter Robert Motherwell. 

Monique Scott is an anthropologist, museums scholar, and former museum professional. She worked for more than ten years as head of cultural education at the American Museum of Natural History, New York, and her recent scholarship focuses on the representation of Africa in Philadelphia museums. Her 2007 book, Rethinking Evolution in the Museum: Envisioning African Origins, explores how diverse museumgoers make meaning of race and culture in museums. 


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About The Barnes Foundation:
The mission of the Barnes is to promote the advancement of education and the appreciation of the fine arts and horticulture.

Our founder, Dr. Albert C. Barnes, believed that art had the power to improve minds and transform lives. Our diverse educational programs are based on his teachings and one-of-a-kind collections. 

Philadelphia art collector, Albert C. Barnes (1872–1951), chartered the Barnes Foundation in 1922 to teach people from all walks of life how to look at art. Over three decades, he collected some of the world’s most important impressionist, post-impressionist, and modern paintings, including works by Renoir, Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso. He displayed them alongside African masks, native American jewelry, Greek antiquities, and decorative metalwork.

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