Education: Russell’s Roost

Last week Bertrand Russell (Earl Russell in England) found a roost. His U. S. odyssey had taken him to University of California at Los Angeles, where he taught last year, to Harvard, where he lectures this autumn, and to the College of the City of New York, where his appointment raised a storm. When a Tammany judge last spring ruled that his “salacious attitude toward sex” disqualified him to teach at C. C. N. Y. (TIME, April 8), U. S. men of learning deplored the New World’s inhospitality to one of the world’s original minds. Last week a small, eccentric art school, the Barnes Foundation, in Philadelphia’s suburban Merion, gave him a five-year appointment to lecture on the history of culture.

The Barnes Foundation is a one-man show founded and run by Albert Coombs Barnes, who invented Argyrol, made millions from his invention and in 1922, aged 49, started his school. Mr. Barnes endowed his Foundation with $6,000,000, gathered one of the world’s most impressive collections of Cezannes, Renoirs, Picassos, Matisses. A salty and original character, Albert Barnes worked his way through University of Pennsylvania Medical School by playing semi-pro baseball, studied at Heidelberg. Now he teaches appreciation of the fine arts to 150 students, whom he selects with great care, lectures to explosively. Around his Italian Renaissance building and twelve acres stands a ten-foot spite wall, erected when a suburban development sprang up next to his school.

Last week Mr. Barnes announced that Bertrand Russell, 64, would be a “permanent fixture” at his Foundation, that there would be “no restrictions” on the eminent philosopher. Said he: “The sky is the limit.” Earl Russell will buy a farm in Chester County, settle down. Lecturing on culture and ideas for the Foundation’s courses in the traditions of painting, he will have the same salary as C. C. N. Y. offered ($8,000), a light teaching schedule, time to write. Said Bertrand Russell: “The appointment is quite ideal from my point of view.”