Welcome to the 2018 Violet de Mesia lecture. I'm Bill Perthys, the director of adult education here at the Barnes Foundation. And I'd like to welcome you to this annual lecture. There are several purposes for this lecture. One is to shed light on parts of the history of this institution, this remarkable institution. And our lecture today will certainly fulfill that. The other is to honor a remarkable woman, Violet de Mesia, who dedicated her life to this institution and in many ways shaped the kind of educational institution that it is today. I will say that I consider myself very fortunate to follow in her footsteps and in the footsteps of other people that carry on her legacy. By a show of hands, how many of you studied with Violet de Mesia? That's wonderful. So her legacy lives on in you and in us. You should all know that this institution, as I'd like to say, despite our remarkable collection, is an educational institution.  That is really at the core of our mission. And if you visit our website, you will see the roster of classes that will begin enrolling in the second week of July for the fall. I think it is perhaps the best collection of classes we've had the opportunity to offer. And they include a four-session class given by Brian, our speaker, in which if you're interested in learning more about this history, I encourage you to enroll in that. These kinds of introductions tend to be a monotonous litany of awards and publications. And while I could do that for Brian, I instead want to say something that I think is a little more meaningful. And that is that Brian comes to us from the community, our neighbor, the community college of Philadelphia. And Brian has for the last several years brought community college students here to the foundation to learn. The vast majority of these students are the first in their family to go to college. And the experiences they have here, being exposed to the collection and the ideas that are part of our history, I think make a remarkable impact on them, a lasting impact on them. And these are the kind of students that perhaps initially don't see themselves as college students. And the community college and community college in general give them an opportunity to explore that possibility. And if they work hard, Brian and I were talking about this just a moment ago, if they work hard, they can begin to build a pathway of education that can really dramatically change their lives. And community college has sent students to some of the top four-year colleges in the area and in the nation, including a recent student who is a Rhodes scholar that went from community college to Temple University. So it's really a pathway of opportunity. I'm very pleased to be able to introduce my friend and colleague, Dr. Brian Seymour. And he'll talk today about our founder, the early years of our founder, Albert Barnes, and the importance that this city played in shaping him as a man, a collector, and an educator. It's my pleasure to introduce Dr. Brian Seymour. Thank you all so much. I would like to sincerely thank the Violet de Mesia Foundation and the Barnes Foundation for having me today. And the opportunity to share my research. And I want to thank all of you for sharing at least part of your Saturday with all of us. Today, I will cast the history of Dr. Barnes, a collector, as a type of Philadelphia story. To explore how this young man who graduated from Central High made his humble beginnings a part of his story. How he went on to unimaginable success but simultaneously shaped a new public for the appreciation of modern art. While my framing will address issues related to the history of the foundation in the later 20th century, my focus, as Bill mentioned, will be squarely on Barnes experience prior to the establishment of the foundation. I'm interested in exploring how his early education and development prepared him for work as an arts educator. In particular, his concern with educating working men and women. It's my contention that Barnes was already public-minded before meeting John Dewey in 1917. I will demonstrate how his early experiences in Philadelphia prepared to make the most of the collaboration with Dewey and establish this remarkable foundation. Consider if you will how the educational space that Dr. Barnes established with the able assistance of a modest cohort of faithful followers in the 20s, the 30s, and the 40s, including an arguably most prominently, Violetta Demesia, has now come back into focus. Through the sundry efforts of the able many that have been assembled and reassembled since the opening of the Barnes Foundation in 2002 at this current location, it is undoubtedly reengaged with the broader public sphere. And in using this term, I'm not merely referring to a matter of access or the opening of the ever-growing collection to a larger museum going public through expanded outreach and education, although these things are important topics of value and significance. But I mean to call attention to the ongoing process of unpacking and explaining the discourse at the core of the collection's mission, which was nearly forgotten beyond the walls of the foundation itself for the better half of the 20th century. Stated differently, currently, this institution is actively and admirably balancing the goals of teaching and celebrating Barnes original methods while steering what is by any other name a state of the art 21st century museum toward a successful future. This is tricky work indeed. And it's worth reflecting on the particular history that contributed to the present reality. I'll leave to others to recount the details of the controversy over public access fought out in the courts and the spectacular contests surrounding the relocation to Center City in order to shine some light on the roots of Barnes thinking about art and the public and why this matters. In the first two decades of the 20th century, Barnes innovated a series of discursive practices or methods of discourse that set him apart from other collectors of his time. In a general sense, discourse can refer to the exchange of ideas and social practice within a given field. And I contend that a collector actively sets parameters as a means of assembling specific works of art, exhibiting the collection in deliberate ways, designing an educational framework, and securing matters of legacy through some formal establishment like this very foundation itself. To put that in jargon-free terms, from the beginning, Barnes offered the public a new way to view and to understand works of art that challenged the status quo, namely, the art viewing experience at other institutions like Fildorf Museum of Art. Stated briefly in his own words, what we are trying to do at the foundation has never been attempted before, that it is to link an objective study of pictures to the powers possessed by every normal human being and to do it with the aid of respectable educational methods we prefer that they be poor and they have to be earnest. This quote highlights some of the key premises of Barnes' approach, the primacy of the art object and the need to experience the work firsthand, the related suspicion of prior learning, and the rejection of existing academic approaches. Other quotes often mentioned support these ideas flavored with Barnes' caustic edge. The so-called standard, I'm sorry, the standard so-called authoritative works are written by antiquarians, experts, bad painters, professional writers, or plain dunces. He actively advocated for the need to cultivate a new type of art viewer, one serious enough to put in the time to go beyond preformed opinion. His ideal target audience would be uncorrupted by prior knowledge. Often Barnes was want to cast this challenge in terms of class, using those he perceived as elites, as a punching bag, while praising those who did honest work for a living. The public, especially idle Philadelphia society eager only for amusement, could whistle in the rain for admittance. Naturally, the foundation itself, which opened in 1925, was the laboratory for his educational experiment. And for more than two decades, Dr. Barnes was a very public advocate for his own method. Following his tragic death in 1951, the educational project continued. Violetta Demesia and team brilliantly worked the gears of the machine that kept running on schedule every Tuesday. For the better part of 40 years, students studied in the galleries. They considered the writings of Dr. Barnes in related texts. And the collection came alive for those lucky few who had access. Despite the positive educational experience of decades of satisfied students, the foundation coasted in a closed loop, serving a narrow public out of sync with the art world beyond its walls. This prolonged interlude was a direct result of the well-orchestrated extension of Dr. Barnes' agency through the bylaws mapped out in the indenture of trust. Followers were true to their charge. They were earnest, hardworking, and delineated, I'm sorry, dedicated to the educational mission, even developing further Demesia publishing up until the year before her retirement in 1987. However, over time, and not surprisingly, their work grew out of step with new publics, or if you prefer, groups of individuals with a shared interest or goals around a specific topic. These publics or groups were activated by historical circumstance in the second half of the 20th century. They established networks of their own, contributed to the ever-expanding discourse in a global art world. Artists, academics, critics, museum educators, art dealers, students, museum members, tourists, trustees, and donors, among others. They came armed with fresh demands on the opaque Barnes Foundation. They were not wrong to expect that an arts institution at the end of the 20th century provide broad and equitable public access, engage in educational outreach, pursue active research and publication, solicit and expand membership, and, of course, train their guests to exit through the gift shop. Theorist Bruno Latour informs us that social relations are in process and must be performed continuously. Over the course of the second half of the 20th century, with the Barnes Collection tucked away in suburban Philadelphia, newly formed but now well-entrenched publics came to view the Barnes as something wonderful and precious, if not curious and a bit odd. Regionally or otherwise, the Barnes Foundation had built few alliances and, thus, their moment of crisis had few champions. In this light, the Barnes Foundation joined a broader cultural conversation in the 1990s after Demesia's death as a genuine outsider. I do not offer this retelling as some kind of tragic implotment, but it must kind of view the history through the lens of the public sphere in an attempt to better understand this moment in time, this dynamic and hopeful pivot for the Barnes Foundation. To move beyond the challenges of the recent past, it's useful to merely acknowledge the inevitability of an awkward and difficult reentry into the art world for an institution that had mostly withdrawn into itself. In fact, it's entirely reasonable that an educational foundation in the absence of external academic pressure, accreditation, institutional partners, and the like, or the demands of a board of director focused on things like making money, increasing membership, you know. The Barnes settled, and it's rightfully so. So for today's talk, we look to the gap kind of between Barnes' theorized way of thinking about the public sphere. Not as a means to criticize or judge, but to recover some of that early inspiration, which in many ways is particular to the city of Philadelphia. Albert Combs Barnes was born in Philadelphia in 1872, then the second largest city in the country. They would continue to fall behind other cities in Barnes' lifetime, slipping behind Chicago in the 1890s and then behind LA mid-century and by the time of Demesia's death behind Houston. Houston. Fishtown, this is where he was born. Ironically, one of the hottest real estate markets in the nation, there at Wilt near Memphis Street and a small home. After moving several times around that neighborhood, the family on hard times retreated to an even less prosperous neighborhood in South Philadelphia, colorfully known as the Neck, which today is the site near the sports stadiums. And each and every historic photo that I could find in the archives looks like a movie set of a down and out immigrant neighborhood, right? Everything kind of looks like this. Children expecting the photographer to do something for them rather than take their photo. When Barnes lived there in the 19th century, this area had been described by one writer as this way. A low-lying, highly-polluted swamp that hugged the east bank of the school, but between Oregon Avenue and curved like a goose's neck all the way around to and draining, if it ever would drain, into the Delaware River at the city's southeastern edge. Barnes attended William Welsh Elementary School at 13th and Jackson and grew up solidly working class. His father was a butcher, but he was much more strongly guided by his mother, who was active in the Methodist Church. I have no intention of psychoanalyzing the good doctor by locating his stubbornness and competitive nature as a means to overcome a difficult and impoverished childhood or the disappointment in the relationship with his father, but he did cite that as a topic of his humble beginnings when describing his own success. It was often a go-to position for himself. As we shall consider here, there is evidence that this past made him sympathetic toward working men and women when he was eventually in a position to help. Barnes' mother drove her son to achieve academically. In 1885, he was only one of two boys from his elementary school to pass the entrance exam for the prestigious Central High School. And I have a photo here as one of the earliest taken in the United States of the first central building. You can just see the tower in the main building. Central High was built in 1838 with money granted from a surplus in the United States Treasury. Remember surpluses. It was founded to offer quality education to working-class boys and the first institution of its kind outside of New England. The trend towards public education had been on the Ascendant, evident in Philadelphia with the establishment of Gerard College in 1831. By 1834, a school tax was initiated so that all children over four were required to attend school. Alexander Dallas Bache, the great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin, was named president of Central High, and by mid-century it became known as the People's College and had the right to confer bachelor's degrees of which Barnes received one. The original building was at Juniper and Market, and then it moved in 1854 to Broad and Green. This was the location that Barnes attended. And it moved to its present location at only in 1939. In his third or junior year, Barnes' family moved up Broad Street to 1331 Tasker, a few blocks from the now trendy Pashyunk restaurant row. This would put him within two and a half miles of the school or a vigorous 45-minute daily walk each way in the snow, another story. At Central, there's little doubt that Barnes came to believe that through focus and discipline, he could better his circumstances in life. Central groomed a certain type of young man by creating an ethos at the school that was meant to drive competition and instill students with a sense of striving. Central's meritocratic structure relied on elaborate grading of its students every day for both achievement and behavior, a system that generated a precise ordering of students based on excellence rather than social position. This regimen where hard work could be observed by all was tailor-made for serious young men like Barnes. He would go on to be vice president of his graduating class and was accepted into the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1889, so right from Central with a bachelor's degree in dependent. Surely the model set for him by successful alumni and faculty of Central who had gone on to great things helped to spur him on. As one example, consider the impact on Barnes of the aspiring scientists Edwin Houston, Elihu Thompson, and Edwin W. Rice. Houston had graduated from Central in 1864 in return to teach physics. While there, he teamed up with former students, Thompson and Rice, to design an arc light generator, whatever that is. They would leave Philadelphia and go on to create the Thompson Houston Electric Company in 1879 and then merge their company with Edison Electric to form General Electric in 1892. Without a doubt, the most remarkable phenomena surrounding the alumni at Central High for Barnes concerns the matter of art. Over the course of 50 years, the school spawned an extraordinary number of men who would go on to become influential art collectors and artists, most notably Peter A. B. Weidner, John G. Johnson, Charles T. Yerkes, William Lukens Elkins, and painters Thomas Akins, John Sloan, and William Glackens. And trust me when I say this is just a cut, right? So there's many, many more who would be famous in certain circles in Philadelphia. A survey of alumni records from comparable institutions during the same time period, roughly 1850 to 1920, across the Northeast yields no similar statistical distribution. The most likely explanation must surround the importance of drawing in the curriculum. Some type of drawing was included in every semester, first and second year students practiced writing and drawing, third and fourth years, learned perspective, mechanical drawing, and ornamental writing. This program sourced back to the appointment of Rembrandt Peale as Professor of Drawing and Writing in 1840. He only stayed at the school for four years, but his textbook remained in use all the way through the time of Barnes. It was a trend in 19th century education in Europe to teach basic drawing as a required skill, a key to understanding how the world worked. This was even applied, I'm sorry, this was evident in applied approaches to art, such as at South Kensington in 1857, what would later become the Victorian Albert Museum. Also, many modern French artists took required drawing courses as part of a curriculum called the Ferry Plan, this has been written about by others. While the study of drawing at Central was pragmatic, aimed at providing young men with tools to help to be productive in industry and professional life, it arguably offered something more. Peale, along with Beish, believed that careful instruction in both drawing and writing had both a moral influence on young minds and offered advantages in almost every aspect of life. This type of thinking figured prominently in the teachings of influential English artist and writer John Ruskin, who like Peale, saw moral value in the study and creation of art. For Barnes, although he did not excel at creating fine art, this curriculum afforded him the distinct opportunity to share in this broader educational trend and undoubtedly imprinted on him the fundamental importance of art and life beyond drawing. His time at Central impacted his life in three significant ways. First, he tapped the network of fellow alumni, most notably, John G. Johnson and William Glackens, that stayed with him throughout his life. Secondly, he gained a competitive drive to excel and lastly, he cultivated a sense of gratitude. The latter ultimately inspired him to facilitate the opportunities for others to thrive, mainly by including working men and women of Philadelphia in his designs. In terms of gratitude, he carried forward the idea that if offered a chance, as he was, anyone might succeed. Barnes' sympathies for working people are evident in his early educational experiment at his factory and then explicitly outlined in the mission of his foundation to educate those who were largely denied access to any formal cultural education, especially African-Americans. He later wrote in the New Republic, what we believe our experiment indicates is that great things of creation in art, literature, and thinking can be resolved to fundamental of human nature and in simple form to be so presented that they may be grasped by plain, even illiterate people to the point of the particular person's capacity. In addition to his background at Central, his motivation to enrich the cultural lives of common people can be understood as part of a broader movement in the second half of the 19th century and into the early 20th century. This moral movement was designed to educate the poor. He was largely an autodidact when it came to matters of culture and he was active in pursuing his own educational opportunities, so reading constantly left behind a large library. Barnes held books by Ruskin in his library. Ruskin famously had taught at the Working Men's College in London from 1854 to 1860, which aimed to offer students something more than the mere practical approach to drawing taught in places like mechanic institutes which tailored their education to craftsmen. These were also popular in America. Ruskin saw a more fundamental value of art to a good life and he reportedly advises students not to learn in the hope of being anything but working men, but to learn what may be either advantageous for them in their work or make them happy after their work. This resonates with Barnes' interest in the study of art as a means to enhance one's life, not as a path to social betterment. Later, under the influence of American philosopher John Dewey, Barnes would be interested in how paintings and knowledge of art might connect in some way to daily activities of art and life. There were multiple adult education projects across America offering enrichment by way of lectures and other form of entertainment such as Lyceums, the Chautauqua Movement, which flourished after the Civil War. In particular, Philadelphia, there were many initiatives specifically targeted to assist and educate the poor. This trend had been building over the course of the 19th century in the wake of the great social changes that accompanied the industrialization of America. Growing chasm between rich and poor, many wealthy Americans were morally compelled to help those less fortunate. Merchants John Wanamaker and John B. Stetson co-founded the Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission in 1878, which still serves the homeless, offering meals and resources to better their current position by way of training and education. Russell Conwell, the founder of Temple University, offered night courses to working men and women as early as 1884. While Samuel Fleischer sponsored free art classes to children beginning in 1898, at which later became known as the Graphic Sketch Club and then eventually the Samuel S. Fleischer Art Memorial. In addition to education, there existed a culture of collecting in Philadelphia around the turn of the 20th century that brought art to the general public. For many, including Johnson, Weidner, Elkins, A.J. Drexel, Wanamaker. The exhibition of art at the 1876 exposition was a source of inspiration. In its wake, buyers would become active in the 1880s in the midst of an expanding art market and increasing numbers of galleries and art auctions. Barnes earned his medical degree at this time by 1892, and instead of practicing medicine, he decided to dedicate the next decade to research and went on to, of course, invent ardual with his partner Herman Hiller, which made him terribly rich. You like that? As a successful entrepreneurial scientist, Barnes was an unlikely prophet of art education. Yet he was a restless man, seldom satisfied with the status quo, and in the first decade of the 20th century in the midst of his early success with his invention, he began collecting art. I've claimed elsewhere that central alumni like John G. Johnson, whom he hired his attorney in 1907 in a dispute with his partner, mentored Barnes through this period of his earliest purchases. Johnson was a well-respected art collector by this time, admittedly. It is difficult to imagine a man such as Barnes, who is everywhere characterized as fiercely self-reliant as anyone's mentee or protégé. Yet there is a clear pattern in how he exercised his agency, and as a collector, this suggests that Johnson was more than a hired hand. He was more than a friend. A mental relationship connotes the informal sharing of a specified field of knowledge from a trusted expert, often from one generation to an eager member of another. This cultural induction model figured prominently and still does in Johnson and Barnes' respected professional fields of law and medicine. For our purposes, regarding art in the public, they had overlapping views. Their lives intersected in a small area of center city in remarkable ways over the course of a dozen years at the start of the 20th century. Johnson was the son of a blacksmith. His mother also active in the Methodist Church, who guided him through central high. As a lawyer, Johnson was a member of an emergent professional class still defining itself in relation to established tradition. He was part of a generation who improvised new status in old Philadelphia based on merit and achievement in a profession rather than on inherited wealth or social privilege beyond the very real advantage of being a white non-immigrant male in 19th century America. Like Barnes, he knew high and low. He was a modern man capable of moving between the established world of the Philadelphia Club and the body world of late night poker games. He was the most successful lawyer of his day and his hard-to-unfortunate freed him to pursue his interest in collecting. Perhaps even more influential on Barnes was that upon his death in 1917, Johnson's will bequeathed his paintings to the citizens of Philadelphia rather than to an established institution. His primary stipulation was that the works remain on display in his home on South Broad Street and open to the public. Barnes actively advocated for Johnson's case. He wrote letters, political forces in the city were too well aligned such that within 20 years the entire collection would be reinstalled in a separate wing of the Philadelphia Museum of Art labeled the John G. Johnson Collection. In this way, Johnson's entire project of art was relegated to just the work of another collector among dozens that comprised the permanent collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  He was extraordinary man who began much like everyone else in an ordinary way, taking cues from what others were doing. Barnes' advance into the art world of collecting could be considered a response to opportunities afforded by his newly found wealth. However, this explanation is complicated by the fact that Barnes was not your typical nouveau riche. He was outspokenly disinterested in the privileges of Philadelphia high society. And he spent most of his adult life battling those he considered to be social elites. Yet this poor kid from one of the roughest sections of Philadelphia took great pride in his accomplishments and was not immune to the lure of status. This is most evident in his attempt at fox hunting in the early 30s when he was first making serious money, calling to mind the image of George Kitterich in the Philadelphia story mounted on horseback trying to keep up with the main liners outside of Philadelphia. Not fair, I know, but fun. Barnes would have been familiar with the art world through Central's network, Johnson, Weidner, Glackens, and Sloan. Notice Sloan has no date because he never actually graduated from Central. Artists, you know, you could hear his parents saying, what are you going to do without a degree, right? Perhaps following the lead of more experienced collectors, such as Johnson and Weidner. By the way, he knew Weidner through his father. They were both in the field of Abattoir, so they both knew each other through there. He began with what was at hand and Hazeltine Galleries was there on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, and that would have been familiar to him. It was founded in 1868 and it changed its dress up and down Chestnut over 50 years. As a schoolboy, when his parents moved to Tasker Street in Philadelphia, Barnes would have walked right past Hazeltine at 14th and Chestnut on his round trip up Broad Street. And in the first decade of the century, Hazeltine's burned down and reopened at 18th and Chestnut, and Barnes and Hiller at that time found their factory near 13th and Spruce, so just blocks away. Barnes began his educational experiment at the factory in the first decade of the 20th century and later expanded it to include display and analysis of paintings that he had collected after 1912. As Neil Rudenstein suggested, his early experiences studying and working in Germany first in 1894 and again in 1900 might have exposed him to European ideas about extending educational opportunities to ordinary workers. Moreover, Barnes Library included books by British writers not only Ruskin, but Roger Fry and George Moore, whose ideas would have been very useful regarding matters of art in the public. Interestingly, he was developing his educational theories over the exact 10 year period that he was in communication with Johnson. As the aging attorney was contemplating his own legacy, he was crystallizing his ideas regarding art in the public. So rather than the transfer of rote lessons from mentor to protégé, the two men were concurrently thinking through these related issues. Of course, Barnes was not yet focused on his own bequest as much as developing an educational method to explain the modern art that he had been collecting. He engaged with the ideas of Roger Frye seeing the potential of a formalist approach to art to upset academic hierarchies, offing away around hegemonic practices of elites and aristocrats and providing access to working people. It was with John Dewey that Barnes found a solution to the matter of deciding on an educational institution rather than a traditional single collector house museum. In 1923, Barnes wrote to Edith Dimmick, Glacken's wife, quote, the central idea in its large aspects was put into my head by John Dewey about five years ago when he learned of the work we had been doing here. Dewey was the key with which Barnes pulled together all of his thinking about art in the public. He had first used Dewey's how we think in his factory in 1911, the year after it was published. He later recalled that it brought me a means of clarifying and adapting what we had read to the needs of most of the employees. In other words, Dewey helped him to lay a foundation as a teacher, especially in reaching those with little formal education. As his interest shifted to the aesthetic world, he would connect Dewey's ideas about sharing experiences to assimilate the ideas of Frye and the insistence on the formal elements of the work as a means to get around the barriers of prior art historical knowledge and the analysis of subject matter. By way of Frye's writings, Barnes came to value experience of the object as central to appreciating art while Dewey provided the means to apply those lessons to matters of education. In the planning process for the Barnes Foundation itself, Barnes told Dewey that he imagined being open three days a week to the public and three days for art students from neighboring institutions like the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. It's possible that Barnes retreated after his confrontation with critics and members of the art viewing public in the early 1920s. It's been well-narrated that Barnes lent 75 of his paintings to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in the spring of 23 for an exhibition of contemporary European painting and sculpture. According to Robert Cosolino, allowing a public exhibition of his collection was in concert with his emerging democratic philosophy of experiential art education. Based on an article published in the New Republic a month before the exhibition opened, Barnes was clearly hopeful that Philadelphia could embrace his view of modern art and his new educational initiative. Things didn't work out that way. Critics harshly criticized paintings by artists like Soutine as grotesque and debased. In his vitriolic response to critics, Barnes embarked on a decades-long war with the press and the Philadelphia establishment. The entire experience reinforced his suspicions about the elitist nature of art viewing and the public in Philadelphia. And as he actively planned the curriculum, he recognized that he needed to shape a different sort of art public. We can read the notion of the desired public for his collection from later reflections in interviews and letters. Anybody serious can link up with us, but nobody is rich enough or prominent enough to get in with us on those qualities. In addition, he included similar language about access for working people in the indenture of trust that created this very foundation. Former curator Judith Dockart has suggested that Barnes identified with those subjects in his paintings that exhibited struggle as he had. This is evident in works like Acrobat and Young Harlequin by Picasso from the beginning of the Rose Period. Here we see fringe figures living unconventional lives. Likewise, it's true of the ascetic from earlier in the Blue Period. And naturally, there was the works of Pennsylvania artist Horace Pippin who worked outside of formal art establishments and Modigliani. Perhaps the issue of Barnes and the public can be clarified by juxtaposing his experience with that of American collector and sometimes rival Duncan Phillips who was heir to the Pittsburgh Steel Glass fortune amassed at the end of the previous century. He attended the best schools and was drawn to the study of art at a young age. He began collecting formally with his brother in 1916 and then not long after in 1918 was moved to dedicate an art gallery as a memorial to honor both his father and his brother who had died within the span of a year. It had become the first public collection of modern art in America when it opened in 1921. With access to ample funds, both men were entering an already expanding market for the work of living artists. Barnes and Phillips set out to create an institution that pushed against existing museum models. They raced to open the first single collection museum dedicated to the art of living artists. However, they took different approaches to matters of the public. If aesthetic disposition according to sociologist Pierre Bourdieu is a matter of cultural capital, it might be fair to say that Barnes rejects the importance of previous learning or understanding surrounding the arts and in the end might view it as an impediment to understanding. His entire approach to art education centered on helping others to develop judgment, Barnes preferred to train the viewer directly. Art historian Richard Wanamaka wrote, quote, Barnes saw his school as a laboratory for student experiments as participant observers in perception and judgment. Perhaps based on his own privileged educational experience at Yale, Phillips actually preferred training experts to guide the experience of the viewer. Despite his interest in education, he did not share Barnes' faith in the ability of ordinary visitors to learn to understand outside of traditional educational frameworks. Barnes and Phillips of course were quick out of the gate and the founding of institutions dedicated to collecting and displaying modern art. The Museum of Modern Art founded in New York in 1929 would dominate discourse around modern art by the time of both of their deaths. MoMA engaged in experiments of its own, trying out several exhibition styles, staging a series of influential shows of the course of the 1930s and 1940s that set in place a definitive narrative of modernism and effectively taught generations of Americans how to interact with modern art. In Philadelphia, Barnes was often at odds with the Philadelphia Museum of Art that it emerged as the locus of art exhibition in Philadelphia in the 1930s. The PMA was the culmination of decades of collecting by public spirited citizens, including John H. McFadden, William Lukens Elkins, George W. Elkins, his brother, and William P. and Anna H. Wilstack. Despite their common working class backgrounds, these patrons rose to what I will call the American noblesse oblige model of collecting, allawning with the example set by the very famous Wallace Collection in London, of which they mostly knew. Contemporary theories by critics, including James Jarvis, that collectors should donate paintings for the benefit of the public were often cited. However, most of these donors did not worry about how their art would be displayed or how the collection would remain intact. Following his mentor, Johnson, Barnes pushed against this dominant model in America, both were part of a narrower set to establish single collector museums, right? So you're thinking of those who did fuss over these things, like Isabelle Stewart Gardner and such. Henry Clay Frick stands as a prominent example of an individual who designed a collection during his lifetime, but closely conformed to the American noblesse oblige paradigm. As a point of contrast, Frick displayed no interest in art education or ultimately the needs of the public. Barnes and Johnson, in their own ways, actively presented alternative spaces outside the larger museum frame to display works of art with specific publics in mind, beyond merely accumulating cultural treasures to be displayed to an undetermined public. Barnes created new associations for objects. He pioneered an entirely all-new, all-encompassing format for viewers to experience. This involved creating wall ensembles to challenge viewers to see modern art not in an isolated manner, as an assemblage of new works, but within the context of a long history of creative arts. There's no other way to access the collection without actually viewing it, because he insisted that photos not be allowed. You can read that one yourself. Those seemingly mundane, discreet actions, Barnes marshaled his agency to provide a new forum for public formation. These actions accumulated into ongoing projects that, while not explicitly articulated or planned in the aggregate, resulted in valid forms of discourse. To borrow a term from Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach's article, The Universal Survey Museum, visitors to museums such as the PMA or the Met entered ritual spaces where their response to the work of art amounted to a well-rehearsed performance with which the museum bracketed the experience of the viewer. The art was presented as the most cherished objects of the culture, and in response, the viewer charged with a sense of awe and reverence cannot help but be preconditioned by the imposing neoclassical setting. Barnes offered an alternative. He invited the viewer to consider relations between the works of art without a clear guide as to how they were to respond. In its ideal form, this eschews a ritualized approach and engages the public in the shaping of new forms of knowledge. What was at stake was how art should be presented to the people of Philadelphia. How art could be used to ennoble the life of the common man. In the preface to the art and painting of 1925, the same year the foundation was opened, Barnes claimed that his method offered something not present in university and college classes. He drove this point home in a letter to Edward Singer of the Philosophy Department at the University of Pennsylvania, another central alum. The purpose of the foundation was to serve as a bridge between fellows like yourself, Dewey, St. Diana, Russell, et cetera, and the well-meaning, well-endowed human beings who have never taken you seriously. In this moment, the future of the Barnes Foundation is indeed promising. It has something to offer that no one else has. The educational mission of Dr. Barnes, the remarkable collection itself, and the opportunity to continue to shape connection between art and the public into the future. Thank you.


Hey beauties, I'm Bianca Renee and you're watching Bianca Renee Today. And today, we're gonna talk about relationships, specifically mine, have a little bit of a story time, sip some tea, so you can learn about my exes, type of people I decided to date, the number of frogs I kissed before finding my prince, some lessons I've learned along the way, me being single for a very long time, then having a fun dating period, then going through like clubbing phase and then being married now with a child. So I thought it'd be fun just to share my love journey here on a very loveful day. Today is Valentine's Day. If you're watching this live, happy Valentine's Day. I hope you enjoy this day. Whether you're single or not, hang out with your friends, love yourself, I know, nobody wants to hear that when they're single, but like for real, it's not that big of a deal to one day. I have spent many Valentine's days alone. Trust me, I know what it feels. So because I might be spilling the tea on my exes and past relationships, I am wearing a wig today as my disguise, just in case one of them tries to watch this video. It is Black History Month, so I am still celebrating and highlighting black-owned businesses. So today I wanted to put on some Juvia's Place, black-owned makeup brand now available at Ulta, and this is their new Reds and Berries series. So I'm gonna put on a beautiful red lip while we spill this tea. So I haven't tried any of the Reds and Berries yet. This will be a first impressions. I do know I love their lipsticks in general and their liners. So first I'm gonna line my lips with the Luxe liner in Ruby. So where to start? Well, I was single for a very, very long time. Like, why did I think I could talk while I put on lipstick? Oh my goodness. I did not think this through. I didn't have my first boyfriend until I was in 11th grade. Like, I didn't even have like the pretend little elementary school ones, nothing in middle school, nothing freshman, sophomore, like, I don't know. Boys just weren't into me. And like I had guy friends and I had a lot of friends.  I was actually pretty popular, but guys just didn't like me in that way. And I just, I probably had low self-esteem growing up. I was not as confident as I am now. And I just, I don't know. I think I just always thought I wasn't pretty enough. I mean, middle school, I have braces, I have frizzy hair. I actually got to go through an awkward phase unlike a lot of these little TikTok middle schoolers now. Like, how do y'all know how to highlight a contour already? Like, where is your awkward stage? I digress. So as someone who loves to dance, I went to every single school dance from middle school to high school. And I had to just sit out on all the slow songs. Actually, correction, winter formal, my friends forced my crush to dance with me. Funny story, my crush in middle school actually had a crush on my best friend, Cindy. We were not friends in middle school because I did not like her because my man, who didn't know he was my man, liked her. So I didn't like her for a long time for no reason, literally just being petty. Now we're best friends. But she didn't even like him. So it was just like a waste of a relationship and he should've just been with me. So winter formal comes along and my friends, I don't even know what they said to him. And we had the most awkward back and forth dance. I have a picture of me like, should I insert it? No, I don't want him to see. So now every time I hear, you got it bad by Usher. Brings back bad memories. Okay, I'm gonna go in with the perfect red. Oh, it's so pretty.  Ooh, oh, this is the perfect red. Oh yes, much better. That just completed the look, didn't it? So I have two songs that scar me. You got it bad by Usher, because I think of that middle school dance. And then I also have a hard time listening to Casey and JoJo.  Yeah, everyone loves that song, not me. Because they would play that every single dance and I had nobody to slow dance with. So I'm just, you know, up against the wall by myself with no one to dance with. But then 11th grade, I got me a man. My first boyfriend. We had our first kiss right before the one minute bell rang. So now I literally had a timer on my first kiss because I'm not gonna be late to class. Hello. So it was very rushed. He had braces. I think we kind of smashed teeth for that first initial. Then I went to my class like, romantic story, he just was like, I think he asked me if he could have a kiss and it happened like in the middle of the hallway at school when I had literally 60 seconds to get the class. So the thing about my first boyfriend is I was a junior. He was a senior. He was moving on to I think a different state for college. And I was like, I'm not about to be in a long distance relationship in 11th grade, okay? So after that first boyfriend, I was then single for a couple years. One of the reasons why I was always like, about finding a boyfriend is that at the time I was trying to wait until marriage to do the do, if you know what I mean. So when you were trying to save yourself for marriage, you started thinking like, well, who would wanna do that? What guy would want to just not do it when most people are down? So I was really at a point where I didn't think I was gonna find anybody that would like want to wait. And I had one time in high school where this guy was like starting to like me. We were flirting. I think we kissed and I was about it. I was someone that would always tell people right away so we don't get too far and you have any surprises.   I was like one of the first times I think I had to like let someone know and he was just like, oh, okay, well, I don't even know what he said, but dude went ghost, did not talk to me again, ignored me in passing at school, that was it. So after that first experience with me telling somebody that I'm not gonna do that, it sucked.  Nobody's gonna wanna be with me because I don't wanna do that. So if you are someone who is also trying to wait until marriage, it is hard and I commend you for doing it. I don't know if you're doing it for religious reasons, maybe you're just not physically comfortable or ready to do it, but it can be an obstacle when dating someone but it also is possible to find someone who will love you enough to just not really need that aspect to solidify your relationship. So even for me, as long as I tried to wait, I did not. And the first time that I did it, I was with my now second official boyfriend for like two years. So I didn't make him wait like two years and then it like, it kept like kind of happening but not really. And then I didn't want to admit that it was happening because it was just like, eh, like does that count kind of thing?  Now you might not even be smart or safe about it because, okay, let's just go there.  But if it's like, you're kind of just in the area, why am I talking about this? Then you start to tell yourself that it doesn't count because you have your goals, you have your rules, you don't want to break your rule but like, it's much better to just be safe and do it correctly versus pretending like you're not really doing it when you kind of technically are. So, my first time. It wasn't like a planned out thing, like tonight's the night, I'm ready, let's do it here. No, it kind of just happened. And I cried, I cried my first time. So fun.  If you guys haven't watched my perfection video, go back and watch that. But yeah, I felt like a failure and I was just sad that that part of me was gone and I really wanted to save that for my husband. So this point I'm like, all right, we got to be together forever now, like you got to be my husband so we can make this like okay. And then I think we ended up breaking up like maybe a month later. So that point I'm like, this is why I wanted to wait. Like I didn't wait two years just to give it to you and then now you're gone like for nothing. So that sucked. But you know, you live and you learn. So then I was like, all right, take two. Let's wait again. I do think it's important to date.   Know that you should go in looking for husband-like qualities but you have to be able to learn what you do and don't like interrelationship. When you go to dinner, what do you like about this conversation? Do you feel like you have to keep asking questions to keep the conversation going? Does it feel like you're just naturally talking to a friend? Do you feel awkward the whole time? Are you attracted to this person? Just really enjoy and take in the whole moment and see what I wanna hang out with this person again. Are they just cute? I have been with some very good looking men. One, whoo, I feel like people are gonna know who I'm talking about if I give too many details. I went on one date with one guy who was a good looking guy. He went to a very prestigious college. He drove from Mercedes, came to pick me up but he was so boring. I don't think we talked like the whole car ride. I can't even tell you what we did on our date. That's how boring it was. But I was just like, wow, what a waste. So you gotta be careful about like your checklist. Like, oh, I want him to have money. He has to have a nice car. None of that's really gonna matter if he's boring. I've also always been into really tall guys because I'm tall, I'm five, eight. So I dated a guy that was six, seven, okay? Could wear any heels that I wanted. But also kind of boring. Like we, like he was fun at times. Like if we'd go out, but I think the final straw for me was when we all went to the club with like our friends. We went to Del Taco after because you gotta hit the drive-thru after the club. Del Taco, okay? How much is a taco? Maybe $3 max. And when it was time to pay, he looked at me for my money. Can a girl get a taco? Everyone's different. There are some girls that are like, I could pay for myself. I could open my own doors. I don't need a man. Like that's fine. But like for me, I still believe in like chivalry. I think there are things that men should do to court a woman. Call me old school. Everybody has their preferences. And I would like the man to open my door, pay for my food, be a gentleman. And yeah, once we start dating, there will be times where you pay for dinner. I pay for parking. You pay for the concert tickets. I'll pay for the drinks, whatever it may be. We could work on that balancing later. But if we're just starting to get to know each other, impress me. And there were just, you know, many guys that didn't know how to leave a lasting impression. So after all that just fun dating, I end up meeting my husband, Royce. Now Royce and I have a really crazy love story. I don't know if I need to explain the whole thing now. I do have a full video on that. Let me know if you guys want me to tell the story again. On our first date, we ended up talking and we got to a point where I looked him in the eyes and I said, this is gonna sound crazy, but I think I'm in love with you. And he said, I feel like I'm looking at my wife. I'm like, what? That is not a normal first date. Usually that's like, what are you talking about? Y'all are crazy. I'm gonna tell you right now, do not expect this little love story. It's unrealistic, but that's our story. That's what happened. We joked as he dropped me off at home, like, oh, should we tell our parents now we're gonna get married? And we actually did. So those are the kind of stories where it's like, if you guys broke up, it would sound crazy. But because it actually worked out, it's not that crazy. And I think the main thing that even led me to say, not the main thing, but one of the things that led me to say that was because I had my talk where I told him, hey, so this is all fine and dandy. This is date one, but just so you know, I am trying to wait until marriage to have sex. And he was like, really? He's like, so am I. And I was like, oh! And I just, I found my unicorn. I could not believe that there was another man in the universe that was also good looking, that was also wanting to wait until marriage. And I told him that like, I wanted to, but I didn't. I messed up because I slept with one person. And then he also had slept with just one person. And he said, after he did it, he also felt horrible. So I was like, we're the same. So it was two like born again virgins that messed up, but wanted to fix it. And then we found each other. And that really is a big moment when you could just find someone that has like the same values as you. And at the end of the day, that's going to be more important than all the other things on your checklist. Let's talk about the checklist, which Royce still gives me mess for because all the things on my list don't matter.  I think Royce is like six, two. Technically he didn't make the cut.  Love dancing. I want you to be a dancer. Royce, he enjoys dancing. I wouldn't put him on America's Best Dance Crew, but that was a priority at the time of my Myspace boyfriend list. What else was on there? I don't know.  What do you believe in? How do you respond in arguments?   How is your communication? What interests do you have? All those things are way more important than the superficial things that are on everyone's normal checklist. So like my sweatshirt says, love wins. Once you fall in love someone, it gets crazy. You can be blinded by many red flags because you're just so in it. You want it to work. This is the one where sometimes it can make you stay longer than you should and everyone around you sees it. It's an obvious no, but you're just so in love and you can't, even though he did this, this, this, and it gets to a point where it can get toxic, that's where love can be like crazy. But true love, unconditional love, that is the ultimate goal. And you'll know the difference when that person does not make you feel bad. Yes, you're always gonna have arguments, but does that person belittle you in the moment? Do they talk down to you? Do they make you cry just because they hurt your feelings or because they are genuinely a mean person? If the person you're with makes you sad more than they make you happy, I don't know if that's true love. And you need to ask yourself, is this person just like this in the moment or is this person's character? Is this gonna be a reoccurring theme throughout our entire marriage? Do I want to marry this person if they're gonna act like this every time we have a disagreement? Things to think about. Side note, the sweatshirt is from another black-owned brand called Bash Baby Clothing. They have stuff for babies and adults, the cutest little sayings. I'll link them in my description. You guys can check them out. Speaking of toxic relationships, let me read one of the questions that I got from Instagram or topic suggestions from Deanna Rache. She says, let's talk about toxic signs in blind love where you don't realize how bad your relationship actually is because you're too in love. My friends have been used countless times by their significant others and they were too blind to see the real truth. Oh, this happens. And it could be happening to you right now and you don't even realize it. Y'all wanna talk about red flags? Sometimes they're not flags. Sometimes they're like billboards and we're just like, that's fine. Or if you're like me, I always like to like help people and I feel like they can change if they just had some help. So I'll be going for like the fixer uppers. There's a time where I had to call the local prison to talk to my boyfriend. I've dated a stripper. I have former stripper. Let me add that in there. I've dated someone who was married and divorced before 21 to someone who had a kid. Wasn't his kid. I've dated someone who moved to California to be with me, lived at my grandpa's house, didn't have a job or a car. Oh yeah, and that's all just one person. But according to my Myspace boyfriend checklist, he was 6'4", he was really cute and he could dance. All things that did not matter. Now am I saying you should judge somebody by those things? No, I mean I didn't, I knew all that and I still dated the person. We all make mistakes. There's all things that we are really arm proud of of our past, that's totally fine. But the bigger red flags are how that person makes you feel. Can you see past this person's past and or flaws because you know that inside they are still a good person. Someone that you'd want to build a future with, have kids with, have a family with. Someone that you would trust financially. Someone that you trust with your heart. And sometimes you don't know this until you actually hear yourself say what's going on to maybe trusted friends, family, or even a therapist. Because when you have to listen to yourself, like I had to just repeat that whole list to you guys. You'd be like, what was I thinking? Love will do that to you. And none of that matters because you're in love. But if it gets to a point where this person that you're in love with makes you cry all the time, makes you have low self-esteem, makes you feel like you're unworthy, makes you feel ugly. Are you always the person that has to apologize first? Are you always the person that has to send that first text and say, are you okay? What's wrong? Do they ever genuinely check up on you, ask you how you feel? Do they apologize and then actually change? Words are just words without action. How many times has this person apologized for the same thing? And are they apologizing because they don't want you to be mad anymore or are they apologizing because they're genuinely sorry for what they did? And there's some things that even though I am married now, I have moments where I'm like, wow, why did I put myself through that? That was a toxic relationship. I should not have done anything with this person. I should have left a long time ago. I'm still learning to unlearn things from past relationships and past relationships can have the ability to affect your current ones if you don't really deal with them and learn from your mistakes. Speaking of which, that's why I have another black-owned brand I wanna share with you guys. There's this book called So Much to Unlearn, poems and short stories on relationships, love and unlearning by Maui the writer. I'm not someone that really reads books, to be honest. But I follow this girl on Instagram and she posts like those hot fire quotes that you wanna repost everything that she posts because it just hits home and it's so relatable. That's this book. Like if Instagram quotes could be a book, that's what this is. She also has a podcast that I've been listening to and I'm not even single, but I am still learning to unlearn some toxic things that I got from my past to make sure that I don't bring them into my now happy relationship. So Maui is like that friend that you don't really wanna go talk to because she keeps it too real. She's gonna tell you what you need to hear, what you should hear, but you often go to your yes friend that's just like, oh, he's fine.  No big deal, no. You need the Maui friend to really just give it to you as raw and real as possible so you don't keep hurting yourself and putting yourself back in toxic relationships. Everybody needs a Maui friend and if you don't have one, buy this book or listen to her podcast to snap some sense into you. So I will admit that this book does get a little explicit, okay? Cause she has no filter. She's gonna talk about the topics that you might not wanna talk about with certain people. Her podcast, she goes there and she tells it to you as blunt as possible, just a little warning, but it's fire. Let me just read you one of the things from her Twitter that's also full of fire. It says, pay attention to the things that you love that bring you the most pain. Some of it ain't love, but attachment. Stop allowing people to convince you that you're tripping when the proof is right in your face.  Can't nothing take me back to a level that I leveled up from. Ooh, so much fire. I think I'm gonna be posting more of my favorite quotes from her, from her Instagram, Twitter or the book on my Instagram, so make sure you follow me. And Maui, her name is Maui underscore W on Instagram and her Twitter is boyfriend chronicles. I think the title of the book is perfect. Like there's so much to unlearn from our past relationships.  Why? Because your ex, you had to do that. You had to be asking where they were going, what they're doing because they lied all the time. So now you checking your new man's phone and all these text messages say mom, grandma, sister and now you feel dumb for even checking because you still have trust issues because of someone else that didn't treat you right.   Why? Relationships are a lot people. I don't know, you might wanna think about it before you get into one. Alone doesn't always mean lonely. Just like a relationship doesn't always mean happy. So just remember that you shouldn't just be striving to be in a relationship, to be in a relationship. Why? What are you hoping to get from another person? Because if you're relying on another person to make you whole, that's not what you want.  If you need that person to do da, da, da, da, da and you cannot be yourself without that, that is not going to be a good relationship because that's a lot of pressure on your partner and if that person's gone, now a piece of you is also gone.  Oh, that was a lot. A lot of information about me that I don't know why I'm sharing on the internet but here you go. Hope you enjoyed the story time.  If I do this on myself, you guys probably learned a thing or two about me that you did not know that I have not shared online before. I have a lot of other great topics that you guys brought up on Instagram. So if you want me to continue these girl talk type videos, please let me know and leave me some other topic suggestions you want me to talk about. If you enjoyed it, give me a thumbs up and subscribe. I post new videos every week and I'll be sure to link my lipstick, my sweatshirt and my book all in my description box. You guys can check those out if interested. I'll see you guys next time. Thanks for watching Bianca and A today. So fun fact, I have actually never been to a strip club. So it wasn't like I was in there and I was like, you're mine. You coming home with me. No, no, no. It's not how it went down.


What simple steps can we take to enable ourselves to get more physically active when we know it would do us good but we're finding it's super hard to motivate ourselves? That's what we're going to be exploring in today's episode of Pookie Ponders so let's dive straight in. Okay so when it comes to getting out and getting active the evidence is unequivocal. We know and the evidence base tells us that it's good for us, it's good for our physical health naturally and it's good for our mental health. Getting active is one of the five ways to well-being which is a very heavily researched approach to helping us all to feel good and getting out, getting active is also a fundamental underpinning of an approach called behavioral activation which is a really really great approach to treating low mood and depression which is basically when we feel really unmotivated and we begin to withdraw that tends to deepen our depression and lower our mood further but if we can get up, get out, get active, get connected then this tends to really relieve our symptoms. Great fantastic except when we need it most, when we need that activation most, when we need that activity we're least able to access it, we're least able to motivate ourselves to get up, we're least able to motivate ourselves to get out so how can we fix that? This episode comes from like deep within my personal depth because this is something that I really struggle with. Physical activity has become increasingly important to me over the years as I work hard to stay well and stay off depression, anxiety and also to stay well day today and live well with autism but there are times when my mood or my anxiety means that it's really tricky for me to do the things that I know will feel good where that walk which feels so good becomes an impossible challenge or getting to my local bouldering wall which I know will make me feel fantastic just feels like an absolute impossibility and I find myself putting excuses in the way or simply just not being able to do it so what are the things that help me and could help you or could help you to support a colleague or a child in your care to get active when we least feel able to but most need it. First of all start small so we need to think about what's a realistic expectation of ourselves so if you're listening to this thinking yes actually I do need to get more physically active I'm going to run a marathon it's not going to work you're setting yourself up to fail and you're giving yourself yet another to stick to beat yourself with so when I'm struggling most I set my intentions lowest so I will be thinking about can I go for a five-minute walk the first step out of the house is always the hardest and sometimes if we set our intentions low and we have a really small goal for ourselves although it will feel big on a bad day but if we have a smaller goal for ourselves then sometimes if it's going well we might choose to carry on so I've had times with my climbing for example where anxiety has meant that getting out being amongst people being in that busy environment feels just like a massive massive challenge just getting in the car and getting there can feel too much and so sometimes I'll just say to myself I'm just going to go show up I'm going to go and walk to the you know walk into the wall say hi to the guys on have a look at the different problems that's what we call the different routes that you can climb have a look at the problems that are there right now and think about what I'll do next time I don't have to climb I don't even need to put my shoes on if I don't want to that really rarely happens but giving myself that out is really important likewise if I'm going through a phase sometimes I go through a phase where I'll be trying to do regular running or walking then I might say rather than doing my kind of regular route or a particularly long route or something new and exciting I'll say I'm going to walk to the bench on the downs now the bench on the downs for me is maybe a 10 minute walk from here and I'll forgive myself if I don't get that far and if it's pouring with rain then I'll say you know I'm not even going to try and get onto the downs I'm just going to walk to the end of the street and then if I want to I'm going to turn around and come home so aim small it doesn't matter how small you aim the key thing is to make a start and the physical act of getting up getting out no matter how tiny that amount of activity might be will really help if you want to do activity within your home then you might for example be doing as I do with yoga and just saying I'm not going to try and do half an hour or an hour of yoga I'm going to set myself the challenge to do five minutes five minutes feels much more possible for me I find yoga is actually really helpful to me it helps me sleep and I try to build it in as part of my daily routine these days but I find it hard to motivate myself to do it because I kind of it feels good when I've done it but I don't really like the idea of it and it's hard not to feel like it's some kind of waste of time because I'm quite a productive kind of person but five minutes I can do five minutes I can spare that's just another youtube video I might not be watching you know so five minutes is doable particularly if it's guided with something like yoga for Adrienne so just go really tiny go micro go to what feels so small that you think that you can rather than you're overwhelmed by the can't next so we've started small we're going to have really low expectations of ourselves that's really important because we want to be able to succeed we can go bigger if we want to but we started small next is pick something that you've previously enjoyed if you can so when we're thinking about getting active thinking about what you've done in the past that's made you feel good something that maybe actually made you smile or felt like a bit of fun getting physically active doesn't have to mean doing really really boring stuff that you don't like that feels horrible that feels hard that demotivates you in and of itself as an activity you can instead think what made me laugh what made me smile what was fun what felt really good when I was doing it or afterwards and try and tap into those feelings physical activity can be fun maybe what you need to do to get yourself active today is just to pop on some music that you really enjoy and jump around that is getting physically active that is absolutely as valid as running on the treadmill or lifting weights or going for a run however you get moving is good so do something that feels good if you can my next tip is about intention planning so intention planning is a proven strategy for making us more likely to do the things that we say that we will it's used loads within the business world but we can use it to help ourselves here too so intention planning is about not just having a goal or an aim but quantifying it and saying I'm going to do this specific thing on this specific day at this specific time I'll do it in this place and with this person we will diarise it is that even actually a word we'll put it in the diary we'll write it down on our calendar chisel it into the stone calendar that we might have whatever we're going to we're going to make a note of it we're going to commit to it and we are going to think about the detail because if we know where when with whom and exactly what it is that we are trying to do we quantify it we qualify it then we are much much more likely to follow through it's also less likely that other things will get in the way this can work particularly well if you're trying to build a routine of getting active so you might say I'm going to try three times a week to walk around the block because I know that's going to really help my mood put it into the diary schedule it in and try to keep this firmly there what I find with this as well is if it's in the diary it might need to move something else might crop up that's okay but if it's there we move it whereas if it's not there and it's just a vague intention that oh if I have time on Wednesday when I've done everything else then I'll go for that walk the walk rarely happens because everything else doesn't get done and part of this is about allowing us to prioritize this because it's really important it deserves to be up there with our other appointments it's every bit as vital to our day-to-day lives our well-being our ability to do all the other things that we get this done so we started small we've picked something we've enjoyed in the past preferably we have thought about exactly the what one where and done our intention planning next the next hack is to try and make it easy for ourselves so at the point at which we found that tiny bit of motivation or it's got to that point in the diary where we said right we're doing this um it's it's going to happen try and make it as easy as possible to then take the next step to engage with the activity so taking the example of climbing for me there's not a lot that I need for climbing which is a good thing that makes it easier for myself as well so I tend to bolder which means I don't actually need other people if I don't want them and there's not a lot of equipment you need a pair of shoes to climb in and you can even borrow those at the wall if you don't have your own and some chalk ideally to protect your hands that's pretty much it apart from some comfortable clothing um but in order to enable myself to do this I keep the things that I need to climb in my car I always have some comfortable clothes I could climb in I keep my climbing shoes and my climbing chalk all in my car so it's not that it gets to the point when it's time to go climbing and I've got to run around and try and get everything ready the other things I usually will take with me when I'm climbing are a snack and a water bottle and again I try and keep those things basically ready to go so everything's already for me to set my snack up I have Ipricots and cashews and they're in bags ready to go with little pots really nearby and then I have a particular water bottle that I take everywhere with me and that's just there ready to be filled so it's a really easy thing I know exactly what I need and it's all there and ready and so if we can reduce those barriers this is like if you are someone who maybe likes to go to the gym just having that gym bag ready and packed so that when you feel able to do this when it's time you've not got this additional barrier of the organization and logistics because that's yet another thing which is a hurdle at which we might fall so try to make it easy easy to do it I also make it a little bit easier for myself with the climbing by having a prepaid membership so for me one of the barriers sometimes is if I'm having a very anxious day I can find it incredibly hard to interact with anyone and I know that going and climbing is going to make me feel better but sometimes the idea of walking in engaging with the staff paying to to climb and the conversations that involves it might sound like little things to most people but for me that can be the thing that makes it impossible for me some days having a prepaid membership and increasingly they you know everybody knows who I am when I walk in then I get waved through I don't have to have any conversations if I don't want to it's always possible to on the days when that would feel good and sometimes connection is a great thing and the staff there are wonderful people to chat to about what I'm working on and that can feel good in and of itself but on another day when I just want to quietly get on with it I do not need to interact so that kind of prepaid membership so have a think for the activities that you might like to engage with what would help maybe there's a particular video that you like to use when you're working out or dancing or doing yoga or something and perhaps you can have it bookmarked in YouTube so you haven't got to find it every time or you know just little things make it easy for yourself to do it at the point at which you're ready to go so you don't have extra hurdles you've got to come over another thing that can really help is to have a buddy so having someone that you're going to actually do this activity alongside can help to motivate you and them and can sometimes make activities feel more possible and accessible for us if your parent or carer one of the ways that you can enable yourself to build regular physical activity into your diary is to do something that you can do alongside your child so I talk sometimes about hobbying alongside our children because it can give us permission and space to engage with hobbies and other activities that we might really enjoy so maybe one of those hobbies or activities could be something that gets us up and gets us out perhaps you have a child who would like to as my daughter Ellie does climb alongside me or maybe you've got a child who would like to walk the dog with you or whatever it is something that gets you up gets you active and this will also have the added benefits of creating connection and bonding whilst you're doing that activity together as well if you don't have a child who wants to join you in this or it's not an appropriate activity for them or the timings don't work or whatever perhaps there is someone else who could be your go-to buddy for this activity we often have a lot more fun when we're alongside someone and it really helps to hold us to account if we've agreed as part of our intention planning not just where and when and what but who and there's someone there that we kind of don't want to let down and maybe that we really enjoy being with that can really help so if I want to go climbing I've got various buddies that tend to be at the wall at certain times and I know right if I can get myself out for an eight o'clock climb on a Saturday morning I know that I'm really likely to see Adam there I know that I'm really likely to see Sally and Nathan there and that motivates me if I want to specifically organize to climb with someone I will give my buddy Carl a call or drop him a line and say really could do with the climb how about it and we will arrange to go together and I know I'm going to love seeing him we're going to have fun climbing together and we're both going to hold each other to account so maybe you have someone like that who enjoys similar activity to you can be something really simple so at home maybe there's someone who might step out for a walk with you if it's a busy kind of work day my husband Tom and I will often think right this is a big day like yesterday he was doing loads of interviews and he knew he was going to be at his desk all day and it was going to be really intense he knew he was going to need a walk he also knew it was fairly unlikely he was going to have the motivation to go for one at the point at which he needed in the weather was horrible and all that kind of stuff and so we planned it we planned together that we would go for a walk when his interviews were done and we both felt loads better for it so it doesn't need to be complicated but having someone to support you to go with you to enjoy the activity with can really help if you want to like really build on that you can get a coach so depending on what your activity is you might actually have regular times when you would attend group coaching sessions or have some personal coaching if that's something that feels possible for you both in terms of the interaction and of course in terms of the budget so when I was learning to play squash I never got really good at that and I have so many other activities but I did enjoy it and one of the things I liked was that there was a weekly coaching session for women so this felt like a really accessible thing to do both in terms of not being too intimidating it was other women who were new to the sport it wasn't too costly and it gave me a time and a place and a person with whom to be so that can work really well too finally you can find buddies through joining a team so if there's a team sport that you like maybe go find out whether there is a local social team that you could join that would mean that you would regularly get to access that sport alongside other buddies who would enjoy it too so perhaps you really enjoyed netball but you haven't done it since school I bet that in your area there would be a social netball team that you could join if you wanted to and then suddenly you've got something that helps to motivate you to get out there this may be though if you're at that stage we're just getting out of bed and getting out of the house feels impossible that might just feel too hard so remember what we talked about starting small that five minute walk around the block is totally legitimate you don't need to join the netball team yet it's okay this is maybe one for the future kind of alongside like doing with and intention planning we can think about building a habit so when we create habits or routines of doing things regularly then it becomes easier to engage with them we've done the thinking before about doing this thing in this way at this time and we've overcome the anxieties related to that because the more that we do things the same way again and again then the lower that anxiety tends to get and the more familiar this activity begins to feel having something as part of our routine or building a habit of it also means that other things are less likely to get in the way because this is what we do at this time we've already given ourselves permission and made the space to do that so thinking about where you could regularly fit this in I personally find that it's often easier actually to do something every day at a certain time than it is to try and fit it in sporadically it sometimes feels like you can possibly have time to do something every day but actually you find sometimes that just building in a little bit every day is easier than trying to do something intensely a couple of times a week say for example yoga I mentioned that before when I'm doing well with my routine then I do five minutes of yoga every day just before bed and it's just a little part of my routine that I try to do every day and because I do it every day it comes after my shower and before my reading it's just what I do and that's okay if I were to try and do like 10 or 15 or 20 minutes of yoga just a couple of times a week that I think would be much much harder to motivate myself and to find the time for the next hack is just about noticing how you feel during and after a physical activity that you're engaging with so actually the whole reason why we want to do this why we're trying to find these hacks to get ourselves up and get ourselves out is because it will make us feel better so notice that as it's happening as you're engaging with the activity just check in with yourself and notice actually this feels good I'm laughing I am enjoying I can feel the endorphins of coursing around my body whatever it is that feels good connect with that feeling and just really notice it notice how good it feels and then afterwards notice how you feel think about whether your mood has actually lifted take note and if you're someone who journals or records things in any way actually literally take note because we want to remind our future selves that the effort that we went to to do the thing to get active was worth it because it actually did have an impact on how we felt and alongside that I would say very important to allow yourself a moment of smugness when the activity is completed no matter how tiny you went when you did it you did it and that's fantastic allow yourself to feel that sense of pride that sense of challenge overcome that sense that yes you did it which is great so a little bit of smugness can go a long way here because what we're looking to do here is to create these sort of cycles of positive reinforcement that help us to remember that it feels good when I do this I'm going to allow myself that moment of pride that moment of joy that I did it and then we're just that little bit more able to do it next time a little bit more motivated perhaps to do the activity again the final hack on my list is to ask others to encourage you so if you are confident that going for a walk for me going for a climb getting out on the hill and going for a fly whatever it might be that feels good for you then let other people know and ask them to gently encourage you at times when it might feel difficult for you to encourage and enable yourself think with them perhaps if there's anything they can do to enable you so again this is something that my husband Tom who's amazing is very very good at with me so he will take note if my mood is low if I seem quite anxious if I haven't been out in a while and he notices that I would do well so he might offer to go for a walk we will do that often and that will really help if he thinks I need something a bit more he'll just really encourage me to get out and climb if I haven't done that for a few days that's a warning sign for me that things aren't going so well and he will encourage me he will help me to overcome the barriers I might have created in terms of work places I need to be things I need to do and help me think about that intention planning and when I'm going to fit it in or he'll just relieve me of some of those burdens and say hey don't worry it's fine I've got lunch I'll sort out everyone here you don't need to worry about leaving the house for a couple of hours just go I think it would do you good you will feel better and sometimes that little push where he takes away the barriers and I've got no excuses left other than my internal struggles which can be big then that makes it more possible for me to do it that only works if we've actually had good discussions with our enablers beforehand because what we don't want is to feel bullied or for them to push us in ways that don't feel comfortable and they will not feel comfortable with that either so discussions at times of relative wellness and calm and happiness about in those more tricky moments what they can do to help you to access the things that make you feel better and that means being honest about the things that feel good that means being honest about some of the barriers that you sometimes may be put in the way and the challenges that you have to overcome and being honest about what they can do to help you and what does not help as well so there you go a whole bunch of ideas to try to try to help us to get out and get active at the times when it would do as the most good but it might feel the most challenging I hope there were some helpful ideas in here for you if you liked what you heard today or you like my work more generally please support me by sharing what I do the more widely my work is shared and the bigger this smile will become and you can also support in other ways so you might head over to Patreon and join my little growing community there of people who get early access to my work and who feed into the ideas that are in my content pipeline all the time it costs a pound a month to join me on Patreon and it's a joy every time somebody signs up because it's just a little way of saying thank you a little way of saying I believe in you it's just a lovely supportive thing so that's a possibility and then the other way if you'd like me to support you and you'd like to support me is to ask me to come and speak at your next event or in your setting so keynote speaking is my thing and I absolutely love it and it's always a joy to be asked so if you're running a conference or you're part of a network or your multi-academy trust is coming together for a training day maybe I could come and help you out I do do online as well so you could ask me to come along and do a webinar for you as well okay hope there were helpful ideas in here do on the socials drop me a line and say what you do how do you get yourself active on those days when motivation is low what can you add to the ideas in here there are always more ideas I'd love to hear yours but for now that's all I have to say so until next time over and out


Tarzan of the Apes, from the novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs, with Mr. James H. Pierce as Tarzan, and Mr. John Burroughs as Jane Porter. This is an American Gold Seal production, coming to you over the world broadcasting system and associated stations. Tarzan has rescued Jane from the pirates, and believing that her own people are not capable of protecting her, he has taken her to the jungle with him. Her father and his party, in trying to rescue Jane, have themselves been captured by the pirates. Lieutenant Darno, however, tricks one of the pirates into taking him to the edge of the jungle, and from there, Darno makes a break for freedom. Now, are you ready? Hold your breath. We never should have let Darno try to get away. No, no, Philander. If he hadn't wanted to get me out, he never would have tried it. No, no, Professor. He wanted to get us all out of the clutches of these pirates. Phil, I blame myself. I blame myself entirely. Bring him along. I am up to that freedom. Are you hurt, Clayton? No, no, I'm all right. A few bruises, but perfectly sound. Darno, get not a word, Professor. Not a word. Sir, Lieutenant Ronald. Today, that lot of good that'll do him. While I'm in back here, for you can say Jack Robinson. He got away? Yes, Professor. Now, don't say anything more. Oh, yes. You'll talk. I'll see to that. Now, Professor, what do you know about this here, runner? Why, nothing, Snipes. No. How about you, Philander? Why, should I know anything about it? Oh, no. You're all as innocent as a lot of ruddy land. Come on. Whoever tells me something will save himself a bunch of trouble. Ah, come on, you guys. You might as well tell Snipes what this is all about. Or I'll start working on you myself. Well, there's nothing to tell. Nothing at all to tell. Darno tried to escape, that's all. Eh, what were you doing on? You wasn't trying to get away, was you? Oh, no. I? Why? I was only... Ah, come on. Come on. You was what? I was trying to get Darno to come back. I knew you'd try to shoot him. Yes. And what was King doing out there with Darno? None of us know that. Darno and King? Yes, yes, yes, yes. That's right. I remember now. Darno wanted to, he wanted a drink of water. A drink of water. A drink of water! Ah, you blokes of the rottenest liars I ever seen. King. Well? Don't suppose you know anything. No, I don't. Well, what was you doing out there, away from your duty? Well, you see, Lieutenant Darno wanted a drink. And you had to take him into the jungle for that. Listen here, Carlos. I am a conductor of the theory investigation. And I'll do it my own way. See? Well, get on with it. Get on with it. Now, King, you might as well speak out. What was you going to get from the lieutenant? What do you mean? Get down. I know you wasn't going out there to get no drink. What was he going to tell you? Nothing. What did you take me for? An idiot? Speak up now and speak fast. I'm tired of talking to you.  Oh, yeah, ain't I?  Ah, now, since shooting him snives, say there is other ways of making men dark. You keep your long nose out of this here, Carlos. Now, King, hurry up. Why, you blasted like a swamp. Back in the jungle, high in the great tree, Carlos Ann and Jane watch the jungle wake into a new day. With the changing light, the deep purple of the tree tops brightens into pools of vivid green. The waking monkeys jibber and chatter as they start their daily round of endless keepers. Overhead, the brightly flumed jungle birds screech and whistle as they wheel and circle about their nests. Arzan looked at Jane. See, Jane? It's fair, right? Yes, Arzan. Although I've seen it a hundred times, it still thrills me. The jungle's dawn. Arzan likes the jungle dawn. Arzan likes the jungle all the time. I understand, Arzan. If I were as much at home in the jungle as you are, I would love it too. Jane at home in the jungle now? Oh, no, no, Arzan. I've gotten over my fear of it in many ways. But I can't exactly say that I'm at home here. Arzan is hungry. Jane hungry? Let's get some fruit and eat. Can we do that on the way to the hut? Jane, want to go to hut now? Yes, right away. I should have gone to look after daddy a long time ago. All right. Holding Jane easily in one arm, the ape man swings from the crotch of the tree and a few death catchers gains the lower jungle terrace and rapidly carries Jane toward the hut. Far below them and out of their sight, a stumbling figure makes its way through the matted wall of vines and creepers. It is dawn now. In the darkness, he has lost his way. But the coming of dawn has gotten his bearings and is now pushing rapidly forward in the direction of the little trail that he knows leads to the river and the cabin. Arzan speeds toward a giant tree at the edge of the clearing. He stops. Look, Jane. There is the hut. Yes. Let's go down to our then. I cannot see. See what? Nobody there. Why? Why, that's right. Why, there isn't a sign of life about the place. Where do you suppose they can be? Arzan does not know. Listen. What? Somebody is coming. Harmon Ganny. You hear a noise in the brush? Yes. I can't hear a thing. Let's go down. No. Wait a minute. We'll see who it is. Quietly Tarzan holding Jane sits within the shovels of the tree's waiting. Then Jane too begins to hear the thrashing in the brush that signals the approach of something. Someone. Suddenly from the margin of the forest, Darno steps into the clearing and quickly makes for the door of the hut. It's Lieutenant Darno, Tarzan. Lieutenant! Lieutenant! At the sound of Jane's voice, Darno stops in his tracks, turns and gazes up into the trees. Tarzan picks Jane up and drops rapidly to the ground. Together they run forward to greet Darno. Memo Zalgene. Monsieur Tarzan. Oh, Lieutenant. Where, Father, Mr. Philander and Cecil? They are at the pirate camp. Harmon Ganny takes father and others? Yes, Tarzan. We tried to patch up the small boat and go out to the arrow to help you when you rescued Memo Zalgene, but we smashed up the boat and the pirates captured us. But... Oh, we must go to them at once and rescue them. Exactement, Memo Zalgene. That is why I escaped. You escaped? May we? I tricked King, one of the pirates, but it is a long story. I will tell it all later. Harmon Ganny did not shoot, Darno? King had no time. You see, Snipes and the others were coming up from the beach. Clayton shouted something to me. King became confused and did not even fire at me. Oh, let us start back at once. We must try to help Father. But, of course, I came at once to the hut to get the rifle and ammunition and to find Tarzan if I could. He is worth a regime old. All right, get the rifle. I'll then have bow and arrows. Then we go quickly. We won't be a second Tarzan. Back at the pirate camp, King stands nursing a flesh wound in the arm while Snipes, smoking revolver in hand, stands threateningly over the injured mutiny air. Next time, I'll let your arid right till you black out. Now then, speak up. What were the lieutenants trying to give you? I'll tell you. I'll tell you, Snipes. But take your finger off that trigger. Well, that's habit then. Well, the lieutenant said he knew where the treasure was buried. He offered to show me the place if I had let him escape. So, you let him escape, did you? No, no. No, I didn't do that. So, help me, I didn't. Well, well, I was going to let him show me and then I was going to shoot him down and come and tell you, Snipes, where the treasure was buried. Did he show you where the treasure was? Oh, he did. But you'll let him get away anyhow. Well, I'll tell you. I was all turned around. All turned around, I'll tell you. What would you hollamin' at me from the beach and this guy here hollamin' to Dono that you was comin'? Then that lieutenant does know where the treasure is. Ah, rubbish. He doesn't know any more than these others. Did he ever say anything to you guys about where he hid the treasure? Certainly not. We have no idea where it can be. That's true, Snipes. None of us know any more than you do. I think he knows. Well, if he does, he knows a whole lot more than any of us. Ah, he just told King that story to get him out where he'd have a chance to duck out on us and blame the pedidant work it on King. All right. Then this here is what we've done. King, you go out and you'll find the fair lieutenant or you'll don't come back. What? You want me to go up and I'll chumble again? Go on, King. Beat it. Get going and go fast. Oh, by myself? Better send a couple of guys with him, Snipes, to see if they don't get double-crossed as a game. All right. Take my friend Phillips with you and sir, help me. If you come back here without that lieutenant, I'll scan you up against the tree. Next time I won't nick your arm, I'll let you have it right between the eyes. All right. All right. I'll go. I'll go. Come on. Coming through the jungle headed toward the mutineers camp, Jane, Tarzan, and Darno walk rapidly along the narrow jungle trail. Crashing through the brush from the opposite direction, secure in the belief that they have only Darno to deal with, come King and his mates. Suddenly Tarzan stops, pulls up his hand in warning to Jane and Darno. Someone coming, Tarzan. Yes. Jane and Darno, stay here. Tarzan going to the camp. Jane and Darno, stay here. Tarzan going to the trees and look. If it is some of the mutineers, Tarzan, you shout. And I come to help you. No, Darno, you stay here with Jane. Behind the tree. Tarzan will see who come. Darno, not leave Jane. What must you if they start to fight on us? No, Darno, stay with Jane. Tarzan, fight alone. Better that way. But this is really my fight. Tarzan is usually right, but it comes to what to do in the jungle, Darno. We'll stay here, Tarzan. Good. Tarzan go now. Suddenly, Tarzan swings his life muscular body up into the trees. Jane and Darno stand motionless, alert. Listening in the spot where Tarzan has left them. With a few rapid swings, Tarzan covers the intervening distance that separates him from the mutineers. He watches them approach, and then he drops soundlessly down through the branches and squats lightly upon a low branch under which the mutineers must pass. Silent, alert. He awaits their approach. On they come, stumbling forward, crashing through the vines and undergrowth. Bringing up the rear is King. His wounded arm stuck inside his shirt front. Tarzan rises to his feet. Swinging his grass rope, he leans far out over the trail. The leading mutineer is almost under the tree. With a quick glance, Tarzan gauges the distance. The eight-man's arm flashes out. The rope uncoils, straightens, settles over the mutineer's shoulders. Before the man could call out, Tarzan pulls the rope toward him. At the screen, King looks up, sees his comrade disappearing into the foliage. Look, look. But even as King shots, Red's body comes hurtling down from the trees with an oath King raises his revolver and levels it at Tarzan. Has King shot hit Tarzan? Well done.