Central File Correspondence 1952-1965 CFC Finding aid prepared by Adrienne Pruitt This finding aid was produced using the Archivists' Toolkit June 13, 2017 Describing Archives: A Content Standard The Barnes Foundation Archives 2025 Benjamin Franklin Parkway Philadelphia, PA 19130 Telephone: (215) 278-7280 Email: [email protected] Barnes Foundation Archives 2006 Central File Correspondence 1952-1965 CFC Table of Contents Summary Information ................................................................................................................................. 3 Administrative History...................................................................................................................................4 Biographical Note.......................................................................................................................................... 5 Scope and Content.........................................................................................................................................7 Administrative Information .........................................................................................................................7 Related Materials ........................................................................................................................................ 8 Controlled Access Headings..........................................................................................................................8 Collection Inventory.................................................................................................................................... 11 Series I. Correspondence....................................................................................................................... 11 - Page 2 - Central File Correspondence 1952-1965 CFC Summary Information Repository Barnes Foundation Archives Creator Barnes, Laura L., 1875-1966 Creator The Barnes Foundation Title Central File Correspondence Date 1952-1965 Extent 41.0 Linear feet Language English Abstract These records include student correspondence and other letters documenting the administration of the Barnes Foundation, and particularly of its educational program in art and aesthetics, by Laura L. Barnes, Violette de Mazia, and other foundation officials beginning in 1952. The inventory reflects processing completed through 1965, however, a backlog of unprocessed materials exist in the Barnes Foundation Archives. Preferred Citation [Author]. [Description of item], [date]. Central File Correspondence, Barnes Foundation Archives, Philadelphia, PA. Reprinted with permission. - Page 3 - Central File Correspondence 1952-1965 CFC Administrative History Dr. Albert C. Barnes established the Barnes Foundation in 1922 to “promote the advancement of education and the appreciation of the fine arts.” Dr. Barnes appointed John Dewey the Foundation’s first director of Education in 1923. The original board of trustees included Albert C. Barnes, president; his wife Laura L. Barnes, vice president; Joseph Lapsley Wilson, director of the Arboretum; Nelle E. Mullen, secretary-treasurer; and Mary Mullen, associate director of Education. Along with Violette de Mazia, who was hired in 1927 to teach a course in art and aesthetics and who became a trustee in 1935, Dr. Barnes and the other members of the board administered the Foundation until his death in 1951. At that time Laura L. Barnes succeeded her husband as president, Mary Mullen became vice-president, and Albert H. Nulty, curator of paintings at the Barnes Foundation, was elected as a trustee. Nelle E. Mullen, secretary-treasurer and general manager, and Violette de Mazia, director of Education of the Art Department and trustee, were confirmed in lifetime appointments. De Mazia served the Foundation as an admissions officer and class coordinator for the Art Department, and dealt with various requests to view the collection and reproduce paintings. Nelle E. Mullen continued to oversee financial and business matters, while Laura L. Barnes administered the Arboretum School and made final decisions regarding the physical plant. In 1957, Albert H. Nulty passed away and Mary Mullen resigned due to poor health. Landscape architect Joe W. Langran and the Foundation’s lawyer Sidney W. Frick were elected to fill the vacancies. The terms of the Foundation’s indenture dictated that the first vacancy on the board to occur after the death of Laura L. Barnes would be filled by a bank-appointed representative and that the next four vacancies to occur would be filled by nominations from Lincoln University, a historically African-American college in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Accordingly, when Laura L. Barnes died in 1966, the Girard Trust Bank nominated John W. Woerner as trustee. Nelle E. Mullen succeeded Mrs. Barnes as president and served until her death in 1967. Lincoln University then nominated Dr. George D. Cannon, and Sidney W. Frick became president. Aside from the bank-nominated appointee, the board of trustees underwent no further turnover until the death of Violette de Mazia in 1988. Despite the appearance of a placid transferal of power, the Barnes Foundation was embroiled in litigation within seven months of Dr. Barnes’s death. In February 1952 Philadelphia Inquirer editor Harold J. Wiegand brought suit in state court, arguing that the Barnes Foundation should be open to the public without the need for a prior appointment. (At the time, visitors required a prior appointment and an admission card.) The case was dismissed, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court affirmed the dismissal of the case on appeal in 1953. The subject arose again in April1958, when Pennsylvania Attorney General Anne X. Alpern, along with Deputy Attorney General Lois G. Forer, petitioned the Montgomery County Orphans’ Court to compel the opening of the Barnes Foundation’s galleries to the public. Again the case was dismissed, but this time the ruling was overturned by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The Foundation signed a consent decree on December 19, 1960, agreeing to be open to the public on Fridays and Saturdays. This necessitated the installation of fire safety measures in the galleries, and Pinkerton guards were hired. The galleries were first open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis on March - Page 4 - Central File Correspondence 1952-1965 CFC 18, 1961. The increased operating costs were at first recouped by a $2 admission fee, which was reduced to $1 following further litigation by the attorney general in 1963. Sources 1 Board of Trustees of the Barnes Foundation Minutes, 1923-1963. Barnes Foundation Archives. 2 Central File Correspondence, 1952-1963. Barnes Foundation Archives, Philadelphia, PA. Biographical Note The main correspondent in this series is Violette de Mazia. Violette de Mazia was born in Paris in 1899, the youngest child of Fanny de Mazia and J. S. de Mazia. Accounts of her early education and arrival in the United States vary, but most agree that she attended school in Brussels and London before coming to Philadelphia in the early 1920s. Differing sources cite her matriculation at St. Gilles École Communale (in Paris or Brussels), the École Supérieure Gatti or the École Supérieure de la rue du Marais in Brussels, and in London, St. John’s Wood Priory House, Camden School of Art, Swiss Cottage Conservatory, London Polytechnic, and Hampstead Conservatory. In Philadelphia she taught French at Miss Sayward’s School and, in 1925, Dr. Barnes hired her to teach French “in the business” (which probably referred to the A.C. Barnes Company). At the same time, she enrolled in the Barnes Foundation’s course in art appreciation and philosophy taught by Thomas Munro. In early 1927 Dr. Barnes offered her a position coteaching the first-year art and aesthetics class with Jeannette Portenar and, soon afterwards, de Mazia began what was to be a long and prolific writing career with an article in Les Arts à Paris describing the art education program at the Foundation. Together with Dr. Barnes she coauthored four books: The French Primitives and Their Forms (1931), The Art of Henri-Matisse (1933), The Art of Renoir (1935), and The Art of Cézanne (1939). She also contributed an essay to Art and Education (1929). In addition to writing and teaching at the Foundation, de Mazia traveled to Europe with Dr. Barnes for study and research purposes and to purchase art. She was appointed to the Board of Trustees of the Barnes Foundation in 1935, and became director of Education of the Art Department in 1950. Upon the death of Dr. Barnes in 1951, her appointments as trustee and director of Education of the Art Department become appointments for life. In 1966 she became vice president of the board of trustees. De Mazia was also an artist, and two of her works hang in the Barnes Foundation galleries. With Dr. Barnes’s philosophy of education as a basis, de Mazia created her own approach to teaching art appreciation at the Foundation. She taught the first-year courses and graduate seminars for sixty years, until her retirement from teaching in May 1987. She served as editor and contributing writer to The Barnes Foundation Journal of the Art Department from 1970 to 1978, and Vistas, a similar journal, from 1979 until her death. - Page 5 - Central File Correspondence 1952-1965 CFC In recognition of her work in education, de Mazia received many honors and awards, among them the certificate of the Legion of Honor from the Chapel of the Four Chaplains in Philadelphia