With our newest shop update, we took inspiration from both the traditional "salon hang" and Albert C. Barnes and his Barnes Foundation. Utilizing the many pieces and objects we have to create a fresh space and show as much as we can over the next few months.
Interestingly, the tradition of the “salon hang” originated way back in 17th-century France, taking shape in the 1660s at the French Royal Academy in Paris as a practical solution for exhibiting large quantities of student work. By 1725, the format had been popularized in the Louvre’s Salon Carrée, where paintings were installed floor-to-ceiling in dense, hierarchical arrangements. This crowded presentation maximized wall space and transformed exhibitions into public spectacles, expanding artistic appreciation beyond the royal court and aristocracy.
The other side of our room, adding more furniture, and of course, a big plant.
Salon-style displays remained dominant well into the mid-19th century. However, as artistic movements evolved, so did exhibition design. Impressionists and later modernists rejected the visual density of salon hangs, favoring sparse, white-walled galleries intended to reduce distraction and encourage focused viewing, more similar to how one experiences a museum today. Yet even as modernism reshaped display conventions, some collectors embraced the salon format for its energy and practicality.
Among the most famous were Gertrude Stein and Leo Stein, early champions of Cubism. In their modest apartment on rue de Fleurus in Paris, they covered the walls with paintings by artists of the Paris School. Works varied in size, style, and framing, producing a vibrant visual dialogue. The installation doubled as a gathering space where artists, writers, and critics met, reinforcing the salon hang as both a display strategy and a social environment.
Stein's apartment in Paris in 1920 (from this great article on MoMA).
By the 1920s, exhibition practices across Europe were shifting toward more restrained presentations. In the United States, however, Albert C. Barnes advanced a distinct evolution of the salon concept. When he founded the Barnes Foundation in 1922 near Philadelphia, Barnes sought to teach people from all walks of life how to truly see art. Over the next three decades, he assembled one of the world’s most important collections of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and modern paintings, including works by Renoir, Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso.
Barnes displayed these masterpieces not in isolation, but in carefully composed ensembles alongside African masks, Native American jewelry, Greek antiquities, furniture, and decorative metalwork. His installations emphasized formal relationships—line, color, rhythm, and pattern—across cultures and media. By integrating paintings with furniture and functional objects, Barnes extended the salon tradition into a holistic visual language, encouraging viewers to see connections between fine art and everyday design.
From the crowded walls of Paris to the immersive ensembles of the Barnes Foundation, the salon hang evolved from a practical display method into a powerful framework for seeing. Barnes’s approach, in particular, reframed the tradition for the modern era—transforming it from a dense accumulation of works into an educational and democratic tool for understanding art in relation to the broader material world and equalizing art with design and folk objects.
Stop by the shop to see what we have added!