Although the museum in Lower Merion, which houses one of the world’s largest collections of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and early Modern paintings, is planned for relocation to Philadelphia’s Parkway, the Violette de Mazia Foundation, which articulates the artistic philosophy of Albert Barnes and his contemporaries, remains a Main-Line institution.

Born in Paris in 1899, Violette de Mazia, who studied art in England before moving to the United States in the 1920s, was the former director of education and vice president of the board of the Barnes Foundation. The Merion Station resident was the inspiration behind its art-education program.

Although she died in 1988 at age 89, her legacy endures through the Violette de Mazia Foundation. The foundation develops and underwrites programs and projects that advance art aesthetics and appreciation based on the theories of de Mazia, Columbia University professor John Dewey and Albert Barnes.

Originally started as a charitable trust in 1991 in the Bala section of Lower Merion, the foundation holds classes at various locations to reach a diverse student body ranging from art students on the Main Line to inner-city children to prison inmates. The foundation’s chairperson of the board is federal district judge Norma Shapiro.

“It gives it broader community support and oversight,” said Ross Lance Mitchell, the foundation’s executive director, about the transition from a trust to a foundation.

The walls of the Wayne office are painted in pastel colors and hung with artwork arranged in a way similar to that found at the Barnes in Merion. The foundation owns many piece of art, including works by local artists, previously part of de Mazia’s private collection.

To understand the foundation’s mission is to first know what the foundation is not about. It does not teach the history of art or offer how-to-paint classes. Rather, according to Mitchell, courses stress an objective approach to “aesthetic appreciation.” Mitchell, during a recent interview in one of the foundation’s rooms containing artwork by Kristján Davidsson, Barton Church and others, said students learn about art traditions — from the Dutch, German, Florentine and other prominent schools of art — and how artists over the centuries creatively adopt these traditions.

And aesthetic appeal can be found not only in a painting, sculpture or other intentionally created works of art but from a common household object like a hinge. Mitchell said such an object’s decorative elements can appeal to a sense of beauty. (Hinges, keyplates and other ironworks, by the way, are part of both the foundation’s and the Barnes museum’s displays).

The courses incorporate the Socratic method of learning where students and teacher engage in debate and dialogue. “They’re demanding classes,” said Mitchell.

The basic courses are “Informed Perception” and “Exploring the Traditions in Art.”

Marcelle G. Pick, the foundation’s president, said “Informed Perceptions” is basically about “learning to see.”

Students who complete these classes are eligible to enroll in the seminars. Current seminars offered by the foundation include “Cézanne,” “Crazy About Art: The Psychology of Aesthetic Appreciation” and “The Cult Unveiled: The Route to the Objective Method.”

Courses, which run about three hours each week for 14 weeks, are offered on a scholarship basis. A $50 registration is required with completed application.

Mitchell, whose experience includes painter, gallery director at the Barnes and nonprofit management experience (but whose “true love is art”), said learning de Mazia’s theories on art opened his eyes.

“The approach really teaches you how to see,” he said, explaining that you learn how to “read the painting.” He believes people concentrate too much on reading the plaque beneath the painting rather than fully appreciating the art above it.

The objective method, notes Mitchell, stresses appreciating a painting’s composition and discovering a painter’s “creative intention” by studying such elements as use of color, light and line.

The foundation is seeking to expand its programming that now reaches 15 institutions that include on the Main Line the Barnes Foundation, Main Line School Night and Main Line Art Center and extends out to the Chester Upland School District, area universities and art facilities in Delaware such as the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts and Winterthur Museum. The foundation believes aesthetic education is a lifelong activity and that life and art are inextricably connected, so it strives to introduce art to all ages and segments of society. To this end the foundation offers courses at Graterford Prison in Montgomery County. Pick said the program has been a success there. “You have put a window in my cell,” wrote one Graterford inmate to the foundation.

For more information on the Violette de Mazia Foundation visit www.deMazia.org or call the foundation at 610-971-9960.

The foundation will hold an open house at Main Line Art Center on Thursday, June 25, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. The center is at 746 Panmure Road, Haverford. The open house will highlight the foundation’s fall-course programs offered throughout the Delaware Valley.

 

Ryan Richards, Main Line Suburban Life

June 10, 2009