Richard H. Glanton, Combative Head of Barnes Foundation, Dies at 79

Richard H.Glanton, a combative president of the Barnes Foundation who in the 1990s went against the wishes of the institution’s eccentric founder by taking 80 French artworks outside of its neoclassical home for a first-ever tour to raise funds, died on June 21 at his home in Princeton, N.J.

He was 79.His wife, Eileen Glanton, said the cause was a heart attack.Mr.Glanton, a lawyer, wanted to turn the Barnes — long an insular art school and museum in the Philadelphia suburb of Merion with one of the world’s greatest private art collections — into a higher-visibility institution, like the Frick Collection in Manhattan.But with its endowment shrinking and its long-neglected building in urgent need of repairs, Mr.

Glanton turned his focus in 1991 to raising some $15 million for a renovation.“The problems at the Barnes were so obvious,” he told The New York Times in 1993, “Ray Charles could see them in a swamp at midnight.”The heart of the vast collection of paintings and sculptures amassed by Albert C.Barnes, a patent-medicine millionaire who died in 1951, consisted largely of works by Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and early modern masters like Renoir, Cézanne, van Gogh, Picasso, Manet, Gauguin and Matisse.

Mr.Barnes had arranged them idiosyncratically, seeking to appeal to ordinary people rather than scholars and emphasizing the works’ connections to everyday life.He stipulated that after his death, nothing could be moved — neither from nor beyond the gallery walls.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

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