The art collection assembled by Albert C. Barnes is a many-splendored thing, but also one shaped by paradox.

It's internationally famous for its exceptional group of impressionist, postimpressionist, and early modern paintings, but they're only part of what makes a visit to the foundation a memorable adventure.

As a collector, Barnes was something of an omnivore. Besides indulging in his favorite artists, Pierre-August Renoir, Paul Cezanne, and Henri Matisse, whose pictures constitute the core of his European holdings, he assembled an extensive body of pictures by American artists, including some Philadelphians.

Justifiably, these receive far less attention than the Big Three, which are augmented by such European masters as van Gogh, Seurat, Picasso, and Rousseau. The American reputations are smaller, the works themselves less prepossessing.

Like most collectors then and now, Barnes began before World War I with paintings, but after the war he branched out into other media. In 1923, he bought a select group of African sculptures, apparently because he recognized the influence of what was then called tribal art on European modernists.

Perhaps a connection to Pennsylvania German culture through his mother's family inspired an interest in its furniture and pottery, much of which he installed at his Chester County farm, Ker-Feal.

The foundation's collections of Southwestern Pueblo pottery and of Navajo silver and turquoise jewelry, which Barnes acquired in the 1930s, both include masterpieces of their kind. One consultant has called the jewelry collection world-class.

Finally, there's the celebrated ironwork - decorative hinges, door-pulls, and such. You can't miss them, because to illustrate his aesthetic philosophy Barnes distributed the hardware on the gallery walls among the paintings.

So the "collection" isn't unitary and focused but more like an amalgam of constituent parts, which Barnes related to one another.

The installation of the 23 galleries, which are today as Barnes left them at his death in 1951 (though in a different zip code), reflects this. European and American paintings are mixed together, accented by Pennsylvania German decorated chests and the aforementioned iron hardware. The African art is kept together, not distributed among the ensembles.

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The Barnes collection mirrors the collector