His father, butcher John J. Barnes, served in the American Civil War in Company D of the 82nd Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry.

[2]: 38  After the war John Barnes received a disability pension of $8/month, and took jobs such as inspector, night watchman,[6] and letter carrier when he could find them.

[5] Albert Barnes' mother, Lydia A. Schaffer, was a devout Methodist who took him to African American camp meetings and revivals.

The company sent him back to Germany to study in Heidelberg,[6] a city that Barnes described as "a loadstone [sic] for scientific investigators of every land.

"[15] According to the Archiv für Experimentelle Pathologie und Pharmakologie he was among those receiving firsts and seconds, given June 26, 1901, from the Pharmakologischen Institut zu Heidelberg.

[16] In 1899, he went into business with German chemist Hermann Hille (1871-1962), and created Argyrol, a silver nitrate antiseptic which was used in the treatment of ophthalmic infections and to prevent newborn infant blindness caused by gonorrhea.

In October 1940, she began the Arboretum School of the Barnes Foundation with the University of Pennsylvania botanist John Milton Fogg Jr. She taught plant materials.

[19] She regularly corresponded and exchanged plant specimens with other major institutions, such as the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

In 1923, Barnes Purchased Le Bonheur de vivre (The Joy of Life), a painting once owned by Gertrude and Leo Stein, bought from Christian Tetzen-Lund through Paul Guillaume for 45,000 francs.

Barnes had a longtime interest in education; he held two hour long employee seminars at the end of the day in his factory.

[23] At the seminars, his primarily African American workforce would discuss philosophy, psychology, and aesthetics reading James, Dewey, and Santayana.

The collection is not hung traditionally, instead they are arranged in "ensembles" which are organized following the formal principles of light, color, line, and space.

"[25] From his death in 1951 the specific arrangement of the paintings and art remained the same until, at the request of the Barnes Foundation, the Montgomery County Orphans' Court overruled the indenture in 2004.

The critic Hilton Kramer wrote of Matisse's Le bonheur de vivre: "owing to its long sequestration in the collection of the Barnes Foundation, which never permitted its reproduction in color, it is the least familiar of modern masterpieces.

"[28] In 1923, a public showing of Barnes' collection at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts proved that it was too avant-garde for most people's taste at the time.

In March 1925, Barnes wrote an essay "Negro Art and America", published in the Survey Graphic of Harlem, which was edited by Alain Locke.

Barnes gave scholarships to singers James Boxwill and Florence Owens and art historian Paul B. Moses to study at the Foundation, and also provided funding for violinist David Auld to study at the Juilliard School, and for singer Lillian G. Hall to attend the Westminster Choir College in New Jersey.

Lockhart sent Barnes vivid descriptions of her trip which included transcriptions of the spirituals she heard while visiting St. Helena Island in South Carolina.

He also paid for the education of Louis and Gladys Dent, the children of Jeannette M. Dent, widow of an A.C. Barnes Company employee, at the Manual Training and Industrial School for Youth in New Jersey, an example of his abiding commitment to his employees and their families.”[1] Barnes wrote several books about his theories of art aesthetics.

[33] In 1940, Barnes and his wife Laura purchased an 18th-century estate in West Pikeland Township, Pennsylvania, and named it "Ker-Feal" (Breton for “House of Fidèle”) after their favorite dog.

[3]: 45  Barnes requested art dealer Georges Keller adopt and bring the dog he met while vacationing in Brittany, France to Merion.

Russell was living in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the summer of 1940, short of money and unable to earn an income from journalism or teaching.

Barnes wrote to Russell, saying "when we engaged you to teach we did not obligate ourselves to endure forever the trouble-making propensities of your wife",[39]: 262  and looked for excuses to dismiss him.

In 1942, when Russell agreed to give weekly lectures at the Rand School of Social Science, Barnes dismissed him for breach of contract.

During his term a selection of paintings were approved by the Montgomery County Orphans' Court to tour and raise money for renovations.

Camp led the Foundation's restoration of the arboretum in Merion and its second campus, Ker-feal, a 132-acre farm in Chester Springs.

The Ker-feal restoration included a full inventory and mold remediation, funded in part by the West Pikeland Township.