Exhibition note

There could be no venue more appropriate for “William Glackens” than The Barnes Foundation. Forget that the exhibition began its run elsewhere and, for that matter, the artist’s hometown status. Consider, instead, the relationship between Glackens (1870–1938) and Albert C. Barnes. The latter befriended “Butts”—Barnes’s nickname for Glackens—while attending Philadelphia’s elite Central High School. Their paths separated upon graduation: Barnes went on to study chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania; Glackens pursued art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, all the while working as an illustrator for the local press. They reconnected some twenty years later under radically different circumstances. Having moved to New York and traveled to Europe, Glackens became associated with “The Eight,” a group of painters dedicated to depicting the less polite...