“Realization can only come through relationships,” Will Barnet has said. “Without this most basic concept, all painting falls into a world of illusion and chaos.” Barnet, an art educator and a lifelong champion of the arts, inspired generations of artists and lived long enough to enjoy many honors that most artists receive only posthumously. In 2011, President Obama awarded him the National Medal of the Arts, the highest honor for an individual artist in the United States. Mr. Barnet died of cardiac arrest at an apartment building for artists in Gramercy Park where he had lived for 28 years. He had continued to draw even after turning 100, and four days before his death he visited galleries in Chelsea to see how they were faring after Hurricane Sandy.
