The Barnes Foundation

The Barnes Foundation is a museum unlike any other, because it is really one man's argument hung on walls. Albert C. Barnes, a Philadelphia physician turned pharmaceutical millionaire, assembled in the early twentieth century one of the world's great holdings of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and early Modern painting — with Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse represented in numbers few museums anywhere can approach, plus Picasso, Modigliani, Van Gogh, Seurat and more — and then arranged it in what he called ensembles: dense, symmetrical walls mixing masterpieces with African sculpture, Pennsylvania German chests, medieval objects and wrought-iron hinges, chosen to make you look at line, light and color rather than names and dates. There are no wall labels on the paintings. In 2012, after decades of legal battle, the collection moved from its suburban Merion galleries to a new building on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, where the original rooms were recreated with the ensembles intact, wall by wall. The effect is overwhelming in the best way: room after room of paintings hung salon-style in the order Barnes fixed, Matisse's great mural The Dance arching over the main hall, Cézanne's Card Players a few feet from a door latch. Admission includes special exhibitions — the current one is Noguchi to Asawa: Designing Postwar America — and the ticket is valid for two consecutive days, which is the right way to do it. The Barnes is open Thursday through Monday and closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Understanding Barnes makes the visit. He was an autodidact with a combative streak and a clear theory: art is for education, not for social status, and the way to teach people to see is to put objects side by side across periods and cultures so the formal rhymes show. His foundation began as a school, and the collection still reads like a curriculum. That is why the walls look the way they do and why nothing can be lent, moved or rearranged. Visitors who arrive expecting a conventional museum sometimes find the density baffling for the first room; by the third, most are playing the game Barnes intended, spotting how a curve in a Renoir echoes the iron hinge beside it.

Practical shape of a visit: the building's galleries are a replica of Merion's rooms set inside a quiet modern shell with a garden-courtyard light court, and the collection galleries take two hours at a careful pace. Gallery guides and the floor staff supply the identifications Barnes refused to hang. Crowding is managed with timed tickets, so book ahead for weekends; weekday afternoons are calmest. Because admission covers two consecutive days, consider splitting the visit — the upper floor one afternoon, the lower floor and the special exhibition the next — which is how regulars avoid the fatigue that hits around room fifteen. Children twelve and under enter free, but the Barnes rewards older kids and teens more than small children.

Fit and pairing: the Barnes sits on the Parkway between the Rodin Museum and Logan Square, a pleasant walk from both the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Franklin Institute. Hours run Thursday to Monday, eleven to five, closed Tuesday, Wednesday and major holidays, so plan the Parkway day for the long weekend. If your interest in painting is serious, this is the museum in Philadelphia not to miss; if it is casual, the Barnes may still be the one you talk about afterward.