PHILADELPHIA – Even as Saadia Lawton came to Lincoln University two years ago to teach art, she couldn’t figure out why the school had never developed a nationally known program in visual arts and museum studies.
After all, Lincoln has enjoyed an exclusive 62-year relationship with the Barnes Foundation and its priceless trove of Renoirs, Cezannes and Matisses. Yet it seemed that students at the historically Black institution had gotten little more than field trips and a few classes out of the deal.
Now, with the Barnes collection’s recent move from the suburbs to downtown Philadelphia, officials at both institutions see a chance to reinvigorate the partnership.
Taking advantage of the long-untapped resource could lead to a new generation of African-American artists and museum directors, said Lawton. Two Lincoln interns are working at the Barnes this summer a first for the university, she noted.
“As long as I’m there, it’s going to be tapped to its fullest potential,” said Lawton, an assistant professor.
It’s hard to pinpoint why the relationship has languished for so long. In recent years, Barnes officials have been consumed with the legal battle over the art’s new home. And Lincoln hasn’t really marketed the alliance to prospective students; it’s still buried on the university website. It doesn’t help that Lincoln’s rural campus is about 40 miles from the foundation.
Art collector Albert Barnes first proposed a connection with Lincoln in a 1950 letter to university president Horace Mann Bond. Barnes sought to teach students populist methods of art appreciation; the walls of his gallery in the Philadelphia suburb of Lower Merion were filled with paintings tightly grouped with ironwork, furniture and African sculpture to illustrate common themes.
