The Barnes Collection, outside Philadelphia, is one of the America’s great collections. “The Barnes collection, all 8,000 pieces of it, is like a multilayer cake. The masterpiece paintings that traveled around the world between 1993 and 1995 are the creamy, highly visible icing. Underneath, less readily noticed, other specialized groups of objects produce a fascinating and incomparable texture. These subcollections are themselves of splendid quality and variety. Not only are they aesthetically stimulating, but they also help to create the distinctive displays, called ‘ensembles,’ that make the Barnes unique.”