Washington, D.C. and the Barney Household

The Barney family's Washington world joined wealth, social expectation, and artistic ambition. Alice Pike Barney's work and the surviving family papers offer glimpses of a household in which Natalie and Laura grew up with opportunities and obligations that did not always agree.

Smithsonian collections include works of art, household photographs, manuscripts and correspondence that illuminate the differences between the women’s family background and the public roles available to many of their contemporaries.