Archival image of Barnes Foundation scholarship recipient Claude Clark

Barnes FoundationBenjamin Franklin Parkway / Museum District

Education & Empowerment: Scholarship Recipients at the Barnes Foundation, Vol. Two: 1927-1952

Now showingUntil 25 January 2027$30

An archives display on four artists and musicians whose education the Barnes supported, including organist Kenneth Goodman, vocalist Lillian G. Hall, painter Claude Clark and Harlem Renaissance writer Gwendolyn Bennett.

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On now All of November 2026

In 1949, Claude Clark's art students at Talladega College in Alabama were told they couldn't attend a University of Alabama art festival alongside white visitors. Clark wrote to Albert Barnes, who told him to go to the press. It worked: the Met's director pulled out of the festival.

That exchange is one of four stories in this small archives display on the lower level, a sequel to the 2023-24 edition. The others are Harlem Renaissance artist and poet Gwendolyn Bennett, picked in 1927 from a shortlist that included Langston Hughes; organist Kenneth Goodman, sent to Paris to study with Marcel Dupré; and singer Lillian G. Hall, whose college fees Barnes paid until he fell out with its president. You follow each through their letters, photographs and programmes. Between the feuds, Barnes keeps thanking Goodman's mother for her fruitcake.

This is paper, not paintings. It's included with general admission ($30, students $5, 12 and under free), and the full letters are online on the Barnes archives portal.

Look for

Bennett's Opportunity cover, July 1926
Look for her black-and-white line drawing of women dancing in flowing dress against a stark black ground, one of several covers she drew for the magazine.
The 1927 Durham conference programme
The organisers left Bennett's name off the speakers' list; look for it added afterwards by typewriter, beside her letter to Barnes pointing out the omission.
Goodman's Gloucester Cathedral poster
A 1955 poster for his organ recital at Gloucester Cathedral, from the European tour that followed his weekly lessons with Marcel Dupré at Saint-Sulpice in Paris.
Clark's A Black Art Perspective
His 1970 teacher's guide from Merritt College in Oakland, illustrated by his son, urging teachers to teach Black art from a Black perspective.
The Westminster Choir in robes, 1944-45
Lillian Hall stands with the rest of the choir she sang with at Carnegie Hall and Madison Square Garden.