The Order of Things: Mark Dion/Judy Pfaff/Fred Wilson

The Barnes Foundation (opened in 1925) is as famous for its idiosyncratic, symmetrical "ensembles," wall compositions organized according to the formal principles of light, line, color, and space, rather than by chronology, nationality, style, or genre. In the ensembles, Albert C. Barnes (1872-1951) combined African sculpture; antiquities; Asian art; Native American ceramics, jewelry, and textiles; manuscripts; and old master paintings, as well as European and American decorative and industrial arts. Through his combinations of art and craft and objects spanning cultures and epochs, Barnes sought to demonstrate the continuity of artistic tradition and the universal impulse for collecting. He also showed himself to be something of an installation artist before installation art existed.Mark Dion, Judy Pfaff, Fred Wilson: The Order of Things accompanies and documents an exhibition of the same name. Dion, Pfaff, and Wilson were commissioned to create site-specific installations that respond to and comment on Barnes's ensembles. A fourth installation, the Dutch Room, created by Barnes in the first half of the twentieth century and dismantled in the 1990s to make way for an elevator, was reconstructed for the exhibition. An essay by Martha Lucy discusses the notion of order and disorder in museum display generally and in the Barnes ensembles, as well as in the work of Dion, Pfaff, and Wilson. Sixteen architects, art historians, artists, collectors, critics, and educators detail their responses to the quirks of Barnes's ensembles.