THE BARNES FOUNDATION

MERION
MONTGOMERY COUNTY
PENNSYLVANIA

March 21, 1930.

Dear Georgia O'Keeffe:-

I was much amused at your recital of the "surprises" caused by our visit the other day. But I doubt if you were as much surprised at anything as were my colleagues when I told them that I was going to buy the two pictures that I had just criticised adversely to them when you and Stieglitz were far enough away not to hear. Since our visit I have been busy telling them why I bought the pictures and why I think they are authentic expressions of yourself and, therefore, genuine art. Just what they are in the hierarchy of the artists they will live with, time alone will tell. Like every other new arrival in our gallery, they will survive or die on what they have in themselves.

I think you will like the places I gave them on the walls. Neither one went well in the company I had planned for it before they came - the still-life over the Picasso goats and the Indian girl alongside of a bright Rousseau. Much of the disorder was due to your silver frames and another kind of serious disorder arose when I replaced the silver frames with gold ones like those on the companion pictures. So, I hung each in a place where the picture plus its silver frame pull together towards order - which is stacking the cards in your favor; that is, I let you maintain the identity which you yourself have established and did not insist on you meeting your hanging companions on the equal terms of gold frames for both of you.

I am glad you've arrived in the new company. You'll have as fair a show as any artist ever had and the odds are in your favor. I hope to learn to like the pictures as much as I like you.

With cordial greetings to Stieglitz and a gentle pat on the back to Brett, I am,

ALBERT C. BARNES

MERION, PA.

December 30, 1930.

Dear Georgia O'Keeffe:-

Your letter, received this morning, makes me
fear that you did not understand my letter of December
24th to Stieglitz to which yours is a reply. My letter
to him stated that I did not wish to embarrass either of
you, neither by asking Stieglitz at this time to comply
with his contract to refund the money, nor by peddling
your work among the dealers. Thoughts of your welfare
prompted the remark to Stieglitz that perhaps he could
suggest a way out of the difficulty.

You are entirely right in saying that my check
for the pictures was in your name but you are totally
wrong in your statement "it would be naturally I who
would refund what you paid me". In fact, you did not
figure in the agreement which was strictly between
Stieglitz and myself and which was made before I sent
you the check. Whether Stieglitz was a benefactor or
not is irrelevant to the fact that he was a guarantor.
He knows that and has admitted it in his letter to me.
The only way I can explain your remarks about the money
is on the presumption that your letter was written with-
out the knowledge or consent of Stieglitz.

But don't worry about the matter of the refund.
It is not as if Stieglitz had repudiated his obligation
and you wanted to save the honor of the family by paying
the debt yourself. I'll see what I can do to solve the
problem while waiting for Stieglitz to tell me what he
thinks is the best plan to pursue in order to avoid re-
flections upon you, him or myself. In short, it is the
ethical question, not the financial one, that interests
me.

ALBERT C. BARNES

MERION, PA.

June 4, 1946

Miss Georgia O'Keeffe
59 East 54th Street
New York 22, N. Y.

Dear Georgia:

It's too bad that you couldn't make telephone connections on Sunday, for I would have been delighted to have you come over before you go West.

It is only partly my fault that I didn't see you when I was in New York a couple of weeks ago: I go there so seldom, and when I do I have so many things to attend to, that the time is not sufficient for me to do all that I would like. I did enjoy your show immensely.

I note that you are going West on Wednesday -- and how I envy you; I know that country well and I love it. When you come back, let me hear from you so that we can arrange a time for you to go through the gallery to your heart's content.

Remember me to Alfred.

With all good wishes, I am,

COPY

59 E. 54 - N.Y.
Sunday - 6/22/47

Dear Dr. Barnes:

It was fine to see you on Thursday. -- good to hear what you seemed to feel about the Stieglitz show at the Museum. I think your interest would have pleased him very much.

I want to thank you for certain things you said that help me clarify what I must do with the collection eventually.

I go to the country on Wednesday for six months at my own affairs, then will return and finish the Stieglitz business. I find that many things settle into place with time.

About my Barn -- I wish you had asked about it last year. I think I must leave it with the Stieglitz collection through the Chicago showing early in 1948. If I sell it the price will not be low and I am not at all sure that you would be interested.

There are certain pictures of mine and of Marins that Stieglitz has asked high prices for and because so many people have said he was crazy to have such ideas I have wanted to remove those things from the market so that no one would get them for less than he has asked. Maybe I am crazy too. My Barn is one of those things.

Going over to Merion to see your paintings has always been a real pleasure to me. My last day there is particularly vivid.

Naturally I would like to have something of mine among them.

You seemed to turn from all my paintings except the Barn as if they did not exist. I wanted to ask what you were thinking but hearing what you wished to say interested me more than what you did not seem to intend to say -- so I let it go at that.

I was most interested in your reactions to the Stieglitz material in general. It was important to me at this time when I haven't much to say about the Museum that is good.

May I see you when I return in the winter.

James Sweeney and I both enjoyed your visit very much.

SUMMARY OF DR. BARNES' TALK

TO A CLASS OF ART STUDENTS ON JANUARY 7, 1949

Members of this class have asked why Mr. Frank Carbone was "fired" as a teacher at Haverford College; a member of the staff of the art department at Bryn Mawr College asked a teacher at the Foundation the same question; from various sources come different stories concerning my part in the matter. All of these tales consign Mr. Carbone and me to the doghouse.

These rumors owe their origin to statements made by the President of Haverford College at a meeting of his faculty members on November 22, 1948. He told them that what he had to say was "confidential," and that he wanted to avoid publicity. Up to that date, knowledge of what the President talked about was confined to the persons directly concerned. Within a few weeks, his "confidential" communication was backstairs gossip here, there and everywhere. And this is why I'll tell you now the verifiable facts as they are stated in the documented record of the affair.

On May 3, 1948, the President of Haverford College wrote me a request to find a man to start a course in art at that institution. After several conferences with him, it was agreed to begin an experiment, the purpose of which was to make the total resources of the Foundation available to the present and future students at Haverford, The experiment was to include two courses, each conducted by a man trained at the Foundation: Mr. Frank Carbone of Boston was to start at Haverford this year with a course in drawing and painting, and Mr. A. L. Chanin of New York was to teach at the Foundation this year in order to work out a plan to be followed next year with a class of Haverford students.

Before Mr. Carbone or Mr. Chanin had been chosen for the positions, the President was informed that students in the art department of Bryn Mawr College are not eligible to membership in a Foundation class because authoritative data, which was accessible to the President of Haverford, showed that the teaching of art at Bryn Mawr College had "little if anything to do with art, education, or commonsense." In addition, the President of Haverford College had been given a copy of an OPEN LETTER to the President of the Philadelphia Museum of Art citing the numerous frauds practiced upon the public by the officials of that Museum, and naming the art department of Bryn Mawr College as a participant in the Museum's recent attempts to again bamboozle the public. The effect of this on enlightened public opinion is that Bryn Mawr College supports the Museum's habitual prostitution of art and education; and Haverford, as a partner of Bryn Mawr, would seem to be in the same category.

When the President of Haverford College first talked to me, he said that the only instruction in art taken by Haverford students was conducted at Bryn Mawr College. I did not know then, but I learned later, that he had already arranged to have a course in the history of art conducted this year at Haverford by a Bryn Mawr professor. This course, now installed at Haverford, is given academic credits and Mr. Carbone's course was placed in the no-credit category; that is, bracketed as on a lower educational level than the Bryn Mawr course.

- 2 -

This degradation of the Foundation's educational standing, this gross insult to educational science, I first learned of in the Haverford College catalog issued after Mr. Carbone had been engaged to teach there. On October 23, 1948, I wrote the President that the experiment was ended, and Mr. Carbone gave notice of his intention to resign. Mr. Chanin also refused to have any dealings with that institution, and he declined to deliver a lecture which the President had asked him to give to the assembled faculty and students of Haverford on December 14, 1948.

The question of academic credits had nothing to do with the decision of Mr. Carbone, Mr. Chanin and myself to abandon the Haverford project: credits are merely the necessary steps to a college degree, and the delusion that degrees are an index of education was blasted fifty years ago by William James in his famous essay about "the bald-headed and baldhearted candidates for the Ph.D.". We quit because we all felt as if we had been enticed to join in a confidence game being played by phony educators.

On November 17th, three weeks after the President had received notice of the termination of the cooperative experiment with Haverford, he admitted to two officials of the Foundation that he had been a "damned fool" in the way he had handled the situation, and he offered to abolish the Bryn Mawr art course next year and replace it by a Foundation course. In other words, the President was ostensibly contrite, and asked another opportunity to be a director in an educational movement which he had already demonstrated his incompetence to handle. An analogue of his plea for a second chance would be the appeal of an indigent who, on a previous occasion, had said that he and his children were hungry, and he was taken into a benefactor's home and fed abundantly, but when he tried to pocket the silver spoons and rape the cook, he was peremptorily thrown out.

We abandoned the Haverford project, and left the President to his own devices, because the strong tentacles of makebelieve were inextricably entwined with the deep roots of the spurious.

ALBERT C. BARNES

MERION, PA.

February 2, 1949

Dear Georgia O'Keeffe:

I, too, am sorry that I missed you when you were
here a couple of weeks ago. I had planned to receive you
with open arms, but just that very morning something cropped
up in a situation which had been bothering me for a long while,
and I had to depart. I hurried back to the gallery, expecting
to find you there, but you had gone. I understand from those
who saw you that you were sober.

The next time you come over, I'll do my best to
arrange to be there.