Upon his retirement in 1997, he received a proclamation from the six Stanford alumni then in the U.S. Senate (Max Baucus, Jeff Bingaman, Kent Conrad, Dianne Feinstein, Mark Hatfield and Ron Wyden), praising him for his arrangements and his commitment to musical education.
In 2000, after three years with only a part-time director, the Stanford Band raised $1.5 million for an endowed chair in Barnes' name, The Dr. Arthur P. Barnes Endowment for the Stanford Director of Bands, to fund a full-time band director to replace Barnes [REF].