Edward J. Sozanski Columns
January 18, 2004
The Barnes should stay put; The foundation hasn't justified a move
to the Parkway, and should sell art to raise money.
I wouldn't blame Judge Stanley Ott if he envied King Solomon.
Determining a baby's real mother was child's play. Ott, president
judge of Montgomery County Orphans' Court, is trying to figure
out how to save the Barnes Foundation from financial collapse
while preserving the integrity of the indenture under which it
operates.
Full Story
May 16, 2004
School or museum, Barnes doesn't have a moving case
The author's scholarly rectitude precludes her taking sides,
especially on the two unresolved questions at the heart of the continuing
Barnes imbroglio, issues that for the most part have been swept
under the rug, especially by the successive Barnes administrations.
Full Story
December 14, 2004
It can move, but it won't be the Barnes anymore;
Ripped from its context, it will be just another "attraction" on
Philadelphia's cultural midway.
When Judge Stanley Ott ruled yesterday that the Barnes Foundation
could move its incomparable art collection from Lower Merion to
Center City, the phrase sic transit gloria mundi popped into my
head.
Full Story
December 19, 2004
Perfect copy may not be perfect
The board that couldn't think straight has struck again.
The trustees of the Barnes Foundation petitioned Judge Stanley R.
Ott of Montgomery County Orphans' Court to let them move the foundation's
astonishing art collection to Center City.
Full Story
December 19, 2004
Will These Choices Translate?
Re-creating the Merion installation just as it was poses some
interesting problems. For instance, how will the new Barnes accommodate
the famous The Dance mural by Henri Matisse - three large lunettes
installed over two-story-high windows in the main first-floor gallery?
Will architects have to provide false windows lit from behind?
Full Story
March 10, 2003
Wealth of art, but poor foundation; The
Barnes fails while peers thrive
The Barnes Foundation in Lower Merion, the Gardner Museum in Boston,
and the Frick Collection in New York are world-renowned. Each is
distinctive and compelling in a way that reflects the personality
and taste of its founder.
Full Story
May 4, 2003
Relocation makes sense, but it would be wrong
The plight of the world-renowned Barnes Foundation reminds
me of the memorable comment attributed to an American officer during
the Vietnam War that, in order to save a village, U.S. forces had
to destroy it.
Full Story
June 1, 2003
Story is told on Barnes' great fight
John Anderson, author of Art Held Hostage, vividly recalls his
first encounter with Richard H. Glanton, controversial former president
of the Barnes Foundation.
Full Story
The Philadelphia Inquirer
January 18, 2004
The Barnes should stay put; The foundation hasn't justified a move to
the Parkway, and should sell art to raise money.
by Edward J. Sozanski
I wouldn't blame Judge Stanley Ott if he envied King Solomon.
Determining a baby's real mother was child's play. Ott, president judge
of Montgomery County Orphans' Court, is trying to figure out how to
save the Barnes Foundation from financial collapse while preserving
the integrity of the indenture under which it operates.
At a hearing last month on their petition to move the foundation's art
collection, Barnes officials shifted the responsibility for staving
off bankruptcy, a responsibility they have failed, onto Ott's shoulders.
The Barnes trustees want to move from Merion to Center City, preferably
to a site on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Conventional wisdom holds
that this would be a splendid development for the city and the foundation,
a classic "win-win" situation.
Yet this is a dubious assumption, based not on clear-headed research
but on blind faith. It's a $150 million roll of the dice - $100 million
to move, $50 million for an endowment - by the principal backers of
this scheme, the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Lenfest and Annenberg
Foundations.
And it's not so much about saving the Barnes as about saving the city.
Would putting the Barnes on the Parkway accomplish either goal? On its
face, the idea seems like a natural, but it's full of imponderables.
The Barnes might not be such a hot ticket if it becomes a more crowded,
more conventional museum. The location - an intimidating, commuter-congested
boulevard that discourages pedestrians - could be a liability.
The trustees tried to persuade Ott to approve their request by invoking
the "orphan defense." Remember the old joke about the boy
who kills his parents and then begs the court for mercy because he's
an orphan?
Imprudent actions and benign neglect by several generations of Barnes
trustees have pushed the foundation to the brink of insolvency. Now
the current board importunes (or threatens) Ott: Let us move, or we
go out of business.
That brutal ultimatum only compounds the judge's dilemma. His court
is supposed to safeguard the intentions of the man who established the
foundation, Albert C. Barnes.
Yet if Ott grants the petition wholly or even in substantial part, he
will inevitably fracture Barnes' legacy seriously, perhaps fatally.
After that, anything goes.
Only one proposed change, enlarging the board of trustees from five
to 15 members, seems potentially beneficial. A larger board might find
a seat or two for people knowledgeable about art and art education.
Ott, much to his credit, examined the petition skeptically. His questions
pointed up what a speculative and nebulous "solution" this
plan is.
For instance, the judge asked, how will the financially beleaguered
foundation support three facilities - Parkway, Merion, and its 137-acre
property in Chester County - when it can't manage two now?
The Barnes trustees couldn't answer that question satisfactorily. They
and their sponsors obviously believe that a Barnes on the Parkway, open
longer hours, easily accessible to tour buses, will generate enough
revenue to make this improbable notion feasible.
Has the Barnes actually studied the feasibility of such a move? inquired
Ott. No, said Bernard Watson, president of the Barnes board; the foundation
couldn't afford such an effort. That's an absurd answer, given the tectonic
magnitude of the proposed change. Why hasn't one of the sponsor foundations
funded such a study?
The overriding vision for the Parkway foresees development of a "museum
mile" that would include not only the Barnes but an Alexander Calder
museum, which is having some trouble getting off the ground. Yet this
vision, too, lacks a solid, empirical base. For instance: How many visitors
would a Calder museum draw? How many people have even heard of Calder,
one of America's foremost sculptors, these days?
The city already has a concentration of museums on or near the Parkway
- besides the Art Museum and the Rodin Museum, they include the Franklin
Institute, the Academy of Natural Sciences, and, two blocks off the
Parkway, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
If a museum ghetto is supposed to generate exceptional tourist appeal,
why don't we see even the slightest evidence of such a phenomenon now?
The Barnes collection might be a strong draw initially, but visitorship
is bound to slack off because of a simple truth: Museums that do not
mount special exhibitions don't consistently attract lines around the
block.
For instance, over the last three years, the Rodin Museum has logged
an average of 55,450 visitors. This is slightly less than the Barnes
attendance now in Merion. The comparable average at the Pennsylvania
Academy, one of the country's major collections of American art, is
about 69,000.
The Art Museum recorded 800,000 annual visitors over the last three
years, but that figure was inflated by three popular special exhibitions
- for Thomas Eakins (100,000), Edgar Degas (220,000), and Vincent van
Gogh (318,000).
The Parkway presents another handicap: 10 lanes of continuous traffic,
especially formidable at rush hours. One needs to be an Olympic-class
sprinter to cross it, especially at Eakins Oval and Logan Square.
There isn't much parking on or near the Parkway, or any commercial establishments
- shops, restaurants, etc. - that would provide walk-in traffic for
the museums.
Ott should consider these factors carefully as he wrestles with his
ruling, but in the end he's still up against the orphan defense.
He can't let the Barnes perish, and he must also contend with two situations,
over which he hasn't any control, that militate against staying put.
First: Potential donors who might help the Barnes stay in Merion apparently
just don't trust the Barnes board to manage money wisely. Otherwise,
the foundation's fund-raising toward that end would have been more successful.
Second: All the powers on earth, from the Pew Foundation to the Art
Museum to the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation, want
the Barnes to move. Big money and civic power are solidly behind this
scheme. As noted, the idea enjoys strong intuitive appeal.
Besides a handful of starry-eyed art critics, the only people opposed
to relocation are the Barnes students.
They possess an insight that Ott should take into consideration. Because
of the intimacy they develop over a year or two of study, they, more
than anyone except the foundation's staff, come to appreciate fully
the unique spirit of the place, a spirit that will be severely compromised,
if not destroyed, by a move.
I sincerely doubt that any trustee, past or present, connects or has
connected with the institution at this level.
So how does Ott rescue virtue from expediency? Ironically, former Barnes
board president Richard Glanton offered the most logical answer years
ago. Sell 10 or a dozen third-level stored Renoirs, which the Barnes
owns in abundance - or as many as it takes to raise a $50 million endowment,
which would keep the Barnes in Merion.
Outrageous? Hardly. Museums sell art all the time to buy other art.
If a museum can ethically sell to "upgrade" its collection,
why can't it sell to save its life?
The Barnes doesn't need 180 Renoirs to carry out its educational mission;
it could easily manage with 150, or even 100.
It has been suggested that the Barnes might sell nonart items (it has
already sold Mrs. Barnes' grand piano) or perhaps let go of Ker-Feal,
Albert Barnes' former country property in Chester County.
The Barnes doesn't need all of Ker-Feal's 137 acres; it could make do
with perhaps 10 and the house, which contains a collection of ceramics,
furniture, and other American folk crafts.
However, this kind of selling isn't likely to raise as much money as
the foundation needs to establish a sustaining endowment. To stabilize
its finances, the Barnes needs to raise $50 million in a hurry. Paintings
are the obvious remedy.
Since the trustees evidently don't have a Plan B, Ott might insist on
selling as the least injurious and least complicated alternative to
relocation. He might conclude that spending $150 million to solve a
$50 million problem doesn't make sense.
Memo to Judge Ott: Let them sell some paintings, but one time only.
Then, if the trustees run the Barnes into the ground a second time,
sentence them to eternal community service - Center City or Merion,
wherever they prefer.
Top
The Philadelphia Inquirer
May 16, 2004
School or museum, Barnes doesn't have a moving case
by Edward J. Sozanski
About a year ago, author John Anderson made a few headlines with his
book Art Held Hostage, which recounts the controversy over philosophy
and policy that has plagued the Barnes Foundation for 15 years.
In December last year, Transaction Publishers of New Brunswick, N.J.,
released another Barnes book that raised nary an eyebrow. You're not
likely to find it in any local bookstore, but you can order it.
Art, Education, & African-American Cultureby Mary Ann Meyers ($49.95)
is the most detailed biography of Albert Coombs Barnes and history of
his foundation to date.
Meyers, the senior fellow at the John Templeton Foundation in Radnor,
has written a chronicle in the strictest sense, a historical record
of events in the order in which they occurred.
She quotes letters to and from Albert Barnes extensively, to the point
where her narrative periodically drags. (Frequent spelling errors further
impede the flow.) Yet the Barnes saga remains compelling, so be patient
and press through to the end.
Meyers' consistently dispassionate tone has a curious effect: It throws
into high relief the passion and the contentious conflict that have
characterized Barnes affairs since Lincoln University appointees became
a majority on the foundation's board 15 years ago.
As I read, I began to compensate for the missing drama by imagining
the Barnes history as a Verdi opera in which the plot is driven by multiple
human failings - arrogance, betrayal, rivalry, jealousy, calumny and
deceit.
The author's scholarly rectitude precludes her taking sides, especially
on the two unresolved questions at the heart of the continuing Barnes
imbroglio, issues that for the most part have been swept under the rug,
especially by the successive Barnes administrations.
These are questions that Judge Stanley Ott of Montgomery County Orphans'
Court, who will decide the foundation's future, must resolve satisfactorily.
A careful reading of Meyers' book suggests what the answers should be.
First, is the Barnes Foundation a school with public gallery hours,
or a museum that operates a school? If it still functions primarily
as a school, should it become a museum? An enormous philosophical gulf
separates these options. The distinction is not just historical and
legal, but moral.
Second, should the educational program developed by Albert Barnes with
philosopher John Dewey be preserved? Is it still pedagogically useful?
If not, what, if anything, should replace it?
I presume that Judge Ott has been considering these issues since last
December's hearing on a petition by the foundation's trustees to move
the art collection to Center City.
I didn't attend that hearing, but I haven't found much evidence that
these two fundamental points received a proper airing. And no wonder,
because full disclosure would significantly weaken the foundation's
argument that it must relocate.
Ever since trustees appointed by Lincoln University gained control of
the foundation's board, the debate on how the Barnes should operate
now and in the future has been skewed, either through ignorance or deliberately.
The public, the media and the art community have long perceived the
foundation to be a museum. Former board president Richard Glanton initiated
this perceptual shift, and it has been continued by successive regimes.
On the other hand, the foundation's indenture of trust, which governs
its operation, is quite specific that it's a school. Lower Merion Township
agrees, because residential zoning along Latches Lane allows schools
but not museums.
The township's position relates to that zoning regulation, but it's
somewhat arbitrary because it's based on a visitor limit negotiated
with the foundation.
The Barnes is allowed to admit up to 1,200 visitors weekly without,
in the township's eyes, becoming a museum. This legalistic compromise
hardly resolves the ambiguity over the foundation's core identity.
If Judge Ott decides that the foundation must remain a school, spending
$100 million to move it to Benjamin Franklin Parkway is patently preposterous.
If he allows it to recast itself as a museum, moving is at least a debatable
proposition.
Yet in one sense, what Judge Ott rules doesn't matter. Over the last
15 years, actions and statements by Barnes officials have stacked the
deck to make moving appear to be not only necessary but desirable. Practically
speaking, the indenture of trust that governs its operation is already
seriously, perhaps fatally, weakened.
Meyers' explication of how Barnes and Dewey developed the foundation's
art-appreciation curriculum reminds readers that this method served
thousands of students well for nearly 65 years, which is why alumni
are so passionately vocal about preserving it.
Alumni are convinced that executive director Kimberly Camp has altered
the founder's two-year curriculum in at least two ways, by changing
the content of the program's first year and by instituting tours for
elementary through high school students who are not enrolled in the
Barnes program.
Second-year classes are still conducted by two longtime teachers who
learned the Barnes method from Violette de Mazia, the founder's protégé and
literary collaborator. Both Barton Church and Harry Sefarbi have taught
at the foundation for more than 50 years, but they won't teach forever.
Alumni believe that more curriculum changes are inevitable after they're
gone.
The continuance of the second-year "traditions" course allows
Barnes officials to contend that tradition has not been compromised.
Still, they must perform an awkward but delicate balancing act to maintain
the fiction.
They have been successful in this so far, and they need to be, because
Judge Ott must be persuaded that whatever exceptions to the indenture
he might grant are consistent with that document in spirit as well as
law.
His task is complicated by the fact that the foundation has already
moved from a strict interpretation of Albert Barnes' recipe for teaching
people how to look at art.
It's even possible that if the foundation is allowed to move, the educational
component will be changed further or diminished to the point of extinction.
After all, the foundation hasn't indicated that it wants to move to
improve its stature as a school; it wants to attract more visitors to
the gallery.
If Judge Ott allows the move, he will shatter the indenture. He will
be conceding that the historical foundation is finished, and a new order
is in place. The ramifications of this, beyond the move, are scary.
The merits of this new regime can't be evaluated because neither Camp
nor the board has acknowledged that such a transformation is taking
place. In fact, the director insists that she has "restored" the
foundation's curriculum to the founder's original template. She has
told people that after Barnes died de Mazia adopted new teaching methods
that she and her staff have discarded.
It might well be that the Barnes curriculum could be improved or that
more gallery visitors could be accommodated without a move, and that
both these changes could be beneficial. Yet with the petition to move
focused on impending financial catastrophe, it seems evident that Camp
and her board aren't interested in incremental change for the Merion
program.
Despite what Judge Ott might have been told last December, the future
of the Barnes is not really about money (the foundations supporting
the move have plenty of that), or parking (a truly irrelevant issue)
or racism (Barnes neighbors were calumnized for insisting that the foundation
obey township zoning laws).
It's about responsible governance, which Judge Ott unfortunately can't
mandate, and about preserving a unique, fascinating and historically
significant American institution.
The Barnes Foundation should be saved not just because of its teaching
philosophy - one needn't accept it unreservedly to admire how it has
engaged students in the act of looking at art - but because, as a delightful
anachronism, it's a refuge from more conventional museum culture.
For that reason, the foundation's Merion gallery deserves to be listed
on the National Register of Historic Places. Anyone can nominate the
gallery, and someone should. However, the Barnes can't be listed unless
the foundation's board agrees. And that's a moral and procedural dilemma
Camp and the trustees might not want to face.
Top
The Philadelphia Inquirer
December 14, 2004
It can move, but it won't be the Barnes anymore;
Ripped from its context, it will be just another "attraction" on
Philadelphia's cultural midway.
by Edward J. Sozanski
When Judge Stanley Ott ruled yesterday that the Barnes Foundation could
move its incomparable art collection from Lower Merion to Center City,
the phrase sic transit gloria mundi popped into my head.
Thus passes the glory of the world. The uniquely idiosyncratic art school
and gallery that had been one of the wonders of the American cultural
landscape since the mid-1920s has been ruled officially dead.
Whatever replaces it somewhere along Benjamin Franklin Parkway will
be something different, perhaps better, but most likely not.
Like the London Bridge that an American developer moved to the Arizona
desert, the new Barnes will be a simulacrum at best, ripped from its
historical context and set down where it will become just another "attraction" on
Philadelphia's developing cultural midway.
The Barnes will surrender its ineffable genius locus and the atmosphere
of seclusion and contemplation that characterizes the art and horticultural
school created by Albert C. Barnes. It will no longer be a refuge from
art-world commercialism, but an intrinsic part of it.
It isn't surprising that Ott would enable this drastic transformation.
The Barnes trustees skillfully deployed the "orphan defense." Over
the last 15 years, through ignorance, indifference, incompetence and
arrogance, they ran the institution into the ground financially.
Then they begged Montgomery County Orphans' Court, of which Ott is president
judge, for mercy. Yesterday, inevitably, he granted it.
The opinion issued by Ott yesterday is instructive for what it omits.
The judge's discussion of court testimony and his rationale for granting
the petition to move the Barnes collection is framed almost exclusively
in financial terms.
What is the market value of the Barnes property in Chester County? How
much would "non-gallery" art - paintings and objects not installed
in the Merion gallery building - bring at auction?
Can the Barnes afford to operate three "campuses" - the new
one in Center City; the original Merion facility (where the horticulture
program would remain); and Ker-Feal, the Chester County house and grounds?
Ott satisfied himself that the Barnes could, indeed, run three venues
- an odd conclusion, given that since trustees nominated by Lincoln
University assumed control in 1989, the board hasn't been able to run
one venue competently.
He also decided that selling assets - Ker-Feal and "non-gallery" art
- couldn't begin to arrest the foundation's gradual slide into insolvency.
Could the new Center City facility be constructed within the proposed
$100 million budget? Of course it could, even though no one knows for
sure where this construction would take place. (The $150 million that
foundations have offered to raise would include a $50 million endowment.)
In short, Ott swallowed a combination sob story and fairy tale: Once
the Barnes moves, visitors will pour in by the tens of thousands and
prosperity will heal all wounds.
It seems evident from the testimony on which Ott based his decision
that the Barnes board didn't break a sweat investigating other options.
Members could have balanced their accounts by selling one important
painting. And they could have sold that painting without violating professional
ethics, because legally and historically the Barnes is a school, not
a museum.
Or it was until yesterday. By turning the Barnes indenture inside out,
Ott also, in a pen stroke, transformed the foundation into a museum.
That's what the people who run it and the Pew Charitable Trusts, prime
bankroller for this radical restructuring, want it to be.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Franklin Institute, the Academy
of Natural Sciences and the Free Library all rejoice in such an outcome
as well. The synergy that Barnes on the Parkway could create is a dream
come true for them.
And the Barnes school? It's barely mentioned in Ott's opinion. Of course
the school will continue, Barnes director Kimberly Camp has said - while
the judge was deliberating, would she dare say anything else?
Yet it's hard to imagine that, if it survives in some form, the school
will be anything more than a vestigial appendage to the new tourist
mecca, analogous to the old-time saloon "free lunch."
These developments not only betray the Barnes legacy, which was a unique
way of teaching art appreciation, they destroy, or at the least seriously
compromise, a unique creation by a collector and educator - don't overlook
that part - who was a cultural phenomenon.
By eviscerating the Barnes governing document, Ott's decision makes
the relocation proposal sound ridiculous in some of its particulars.
For instance, why bother to replicate down to the last light switch
the proportions and details of the Merion gallery in Center City? A
replica doesn't make sense when the original exists, and in splendid
condition.
The new Barnes is going to be a tourist museum, so why not drop this
fatuous homage to a tradition that has been rejected in practice and
build something appropriate to whatever site is chosen?
By the same token, why maintain the school when the Barnes administration,
as it has demonstrated, no longer believes in it?
The new "three-campus" Barnes might make more money from tourism,
but, as court testimony indicated, it will also have to contend with
increased running costs. It will need more staff; overhead, maintenance
and security costs will go up (by how much isn't clear).
This means that the whole enterprise is a gamble, especially given the
record of the current Barnes administration. I wouldn't be surprised
to see the trustees back in court eventually, begging for even more
latitude in governance.
The relocation isn't going to happen this year or next, so there's still
plenty of time to savor the Barnes in an uncorrupted state before it
becomes Vegas-ized. That experience, like visiting Venice, is incomparable.
So visit Venice before it sinks, and see the Barnes before it moves.
Top
The Philadelphia Inquirer
December 19, 2004
Perfect copy may not be perfect
By Edward J. Sozanski
The board that couldn't think straight has struck again.
The trustees of the Barnes Foundation petitioned Judge Stanley R. Ott
of Montgomery County Orphans' Court to let them move the foundation's
astonishing art collection to Center City.
They needed to do this, the trustees argued, because the foundation
faced financial insolvency in Merion. Proximity to the city's tourist
population would make available a larger potential source of revenue.
To no one's surprise, Ott bought the argument. The Barnes is moving
to a site on the Parkway between the Free Library and the Rodin Museum.
The cultural synergy of the Rodin, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and
planned Calder Museum nearby would be remarkable.
Ott's decision seems to save the day, but on closer examination one
wonders about lost opportunity. In Judge Ott's court, the board promised
to re-create the Barnes galleries exactly in the new location, including
the display of the distinctive ensembles of paintings alongside decorative
objects that make the Barnes so provocatively different from other museums.
Ott's approval of the petition commits the foundation to this course,
according to Barnes executive director Kimberly Camp. This in itself
is problematic, because there are other options. But now the narrative
becomes even stranger.
The new Barnes building is expected to be considerably larger than the
current one in Merion. So the replicated galleries will be, in essence,
a small box inside a large one.
Furthermore, Camp confirms, the new Barnes will admit only 100 visitors
into the gallery at one time, by timed tickets, exactly as in Merion.
Attendance will increase, perhaps to a projected 180,000 because the
Parkway Barnes will be open more hours, more days a week. But expenses,
especially overhead, also will increase.
If the replicated galleries are going to be the same size and if entrance
is going to be restricted, as it is now, one wonders if the expected
gain is great enough to be worth the effort.
The foundation's Merion galleries are much too small for large crowds;
the 100-visitor limit acknowledges that. So why replicate the problem
as part of the solution?
We put aside here how the Barnes will use the additional space that
will be built on the Parkway. (The foundation is not committed to copying
the Merion building in toto, just its interior.)
Some probably will be taken up by classrooms, because the foundation
is, and says it's committed to remaining, a school. A large shop, a
cafe and perhaps an auditorium are the likely possibilities. But the
decision, made when the petition was submitted, to reproduce the galleries
exactly is the most troublesome issue.
It forecloses any attempt by the board to expand and enrich the foundation's
educational program. It indicates that the board didn't adequately consider
all the ramifications of moving. It further confirms that the trustees
continue to fumble their responsibilities to the remarkable legacy of
the founder, Albert C. Barnes.
Replicating the Merion installation is not only the easiest option for
the new Barnes, it's the one most people following this saga probably
expect. But it's not the only option.
Albert Barnes founded his eponymous foundation in 1922 as, in his words,
an educational experiment. He recognized the possibility that the noble
experiment might fail. In one sense it has: The planned move destroys
the sense of the foundation as a collection rooted to its historical
site and to a particular era in American history.
Judge Ott's decision opens a new chapter in the sometimes tumultuous
story of this unique American institution. It should have created an
opportunity for some imaginative thinking about whether the Barnes could
improve the way it teaches art appreciation and, most important, preserve
the values that have been its philosophical anchor for more than 80
years.
Re-creating all the wall ensembles - the heart of an analytical teaching
method that identifies compositional similarities of shape, line, color
and space in paintings and decorative objects - doesn't seem to be the
only way to do this.
It might eventually turn out to be the best way, but the board should
have given itself the flexibility to consider other schemes.
For instance, the Merion hanging, devised by Barnes to illustrate the
analytical method just described, does not give sufficient attention
to individual artists, or to particular masterpieces among a vast collection
that contains a lot of mediocre pictures.
These weaknesses could be addressed by emphasizing one of the collection's
unique aspects, one that speaks directly to Albert Barnes' taste, by
highlighting the three artists who dominated his thinking - Pierre-Auguste
Renoir, Paul Cezanne and Henri Matisse.
The foundation owns enough paintings to stock a small museum devoted
to each artist. These incomparable concentrations could become the basis
of a three-cornered installation that could easily retain some or many
of the ensembles, which would allow the traditional Barnes curriculum
to continue. Once the move is made, you don't need all the dozens and
dozens of original walls in order to teach.
Each core group could be enhanced by other artists in the respective
cohorts - Renoir by Claude Monet and other impressionists; Cezanne by
Vincent van Gogh, Georges Seurat and other postimpressionists; and Matisse
by Pablo Picasso and other early modernists.
Such an arrangement not only would honor the founder's achievement in
a different way, it should prove to be a magnificent visitor magnet.
Absent their legal commitment, Camp and the board might also have considered
whether the entire collection had to move. Some paintings, sculptures
and decorative arts might remain in Merion, which will continue to house
the foundation's horticulture program. Otherwise, this splendid suite
of galleries would be reduced to mere office space.
Even within the constraints of their promise, the board should correct
one other of Merion's deficiencies. It should create a gallery, or suite
of galleries, devoted to Barnes' life, his collecting, and especially
to the educational philosophy embodied in the art collection.
Permission to move will produce some positive results. If the expected
legion of art-hungry citizens and cultural tourists actually materializes,
more people than might have traveled to Merion will get to see the Barnes
collection. It might even attract more students to the school, which
the foundation has vowed to continue.
Yet the emerging shape of this momentous event suggests that ultimately
the board made a speculative and potentially damaging move.
It traded a unique art school and public gallery integrated into a beautiful
suburban aboretum - itself a splendid and timeless work of art - for
a simulacrum in a box on a bustling urban plot. The choice might eventually
pay off financially, but aesthetically - and that's what the Barnes
teaches, aesthetics - it's appalling.
Top
The Philadelphia Inquirer
December 19, 2004
Will These Choices Translate?
By Edward J. Sozanski
Re-creating the Merion installation just as it was poses some interesting
problems. For instance, how will the new Barnes accommodate the famous
The Dance mural by Henri Matisse - three large lunettes installed over
two-story-high windows in the main first-floor gallery? Will architects
have to provide false windows lit from behind?
And what will they do about Matisse's The Joy of Life, a painting that
hangs, poorly lit, in the stairwell to the second floor? Will the new
Barnes relegate this icon of modern art to an analogous dim perch on
the Parkway?
Top
The Philadelphia Inquirer
March 10, 2003
Wealth of art, but poor foundation;
The Barnes fails while peers thrive
Edward J. Sozanski
Millionaire art collectors Albert C. Barnes, Isabella Stewart Gardner,
and Henry Clay Frick had this in common: Each formed a world-class collection
that subsequently became a public museum.
The Barnes Foundation in Lower Merion, the Gardner Museum in Boston,
and the Frick Collection in New York are world-renowned. Each is distinctive
and compelling in a way that reflects the personality and taste of its
founder.
But today, two of these legacies are flourishing, while the Barnes,
nearest and dearest to Philadelphia, is staggering.
The Gardner and the Frick, established with enlightened and public-spirited
philanthropy, did not have their founder trying to administer them from
the grave, as the Barnes did. And those museums have proved better at
recognizing the need to adapt before crisis occurs.
Consider:
Because of the size of their boards - an art museum's prime generator
of gifts and bequests - the Gardner (19 trustees) and the Frick (11)
have been much more successful in fund-raising than has the Barnes (5).
Gardner and Frick trustees are free to manage their endowments as they
see fit, and have increased them substantially. Until 1997, Barnes trustees
were legally limited to government bonds and railroad securities. The
endowment not only did not grow, it shrank to zero. Now the Barnes needs
help to cover its operating costs.
The Gardner and the Frick have developed special programs, especially
in music, to broaden their audiences. Both mount special exhibitions.
The Barnes remains primarily a school whose galleries are open only
three days a week.
The Gardner and the Frick are situated in the heart of cities, convenient
to transportation and other museums. The Barnes is in a suburb, where
access and parking are limited.
Albert Barnes either did not foresee that his collection might eventually
operate as a museum, or he determined to preclude such an eventuality.
Whether the Barnes can turn itself around depends on relief from the
straitjacket of custodial restrictions bequeathed by its founder and
on how much it is willing to change.
*
The Gardner Museum, celebrating its centennial this year, is similar
to the Barnes in the way it operates. It confronted and surmounted a
survival crisis in the 1980s.
Isabella Stewart Gardner was a wealthy Boston matron who began to buy
art in the early 1890s. The museum she created is a delightful fusion
of art, architecture and horticulture - another convergence with the
Barnes Foundation.
Gardner put together a select collection of more than 2,500 Old Master
and 19th-century paintings, sculptures, tapestries, furniture, manuscripts,
rare books, and other decorative arts.
Like the Barnes, the Gardner Museum is not allowed to alter the installations
of its galleries, which Gardner fixed before she died in 1924. As in
Merion, the collection is fixed in time - no additions or deletions.
(In 1990, thieves stole five paintings, including a Vermeer and two
Rembrandts; six works on paper; and decorative objects from the museum.
None has been recovered, and the frames from which they were cut remain
in place.)
Special as it is, the Gardner's collection shares star billing with
its building, which re-creates a 15th-century Venetian palazzo.
The four-story, skylit interior courtyard, verdant year-round with flowers,
palm trees and even grass, gives the museum an incomparable ambience.
Many people visit just to experience its serene beauty and mood of refuge
within the bustling city.
But even this miniature garden of earthly delights was not enough to
keep the Gardner's attendance from slipping.
By the 1980s, director Anne Hawley recalled, the board decided that
it had to reinvigorate the museum by reinventing itself.
By bringing in community and civic leaders, the board increased its
membership to 19. The new members were expected to generate money, and
they did, Hawley said. "If they hadn't done that, we would be in
trouble now."
Hawley said the Gardner now raises more than $3 million annually from
grants and gifts, supplemented by nearly $1.6 million in earned income.
"We're in excellent shape financially and otherwise," she said. "We've
always had a balanced budget. Our next move is to run an endowment drive that
will support our special programs."
It is those special programs that have kept the Gardner fresh. The museum
inaugurated a Sunday concert series as far back as 1927. Last year,
it introduced a program called "Saturdays at the Gardner" that
involves family activities, performance pieces, lectures and jazz concerts.
*
While the Gardner centennial demonstrates that legacy museums can cope
successfully with evolutionary pressures, the Frick's experience illuminates
the degree to which a collection's prosperity depends on its founder's
vision.
The Frick's collection is similar in character to the Gardner's - both
reflect the taste of wealthy 19th-century art patrons - but at 1,100
objects it is much smaller.
Housed in Henry Clay Frick's former mansion overlooking Central Park,
the museum is a jewel box of Old Master paintings by Vermeer, Rembrandt,
Velzquez and others.
The Frick's legacy is a bit looser than that of the Barnes. Art that
the founder acquired cannot be sold or lent; otherwise, the trustees
are free to add to the collection, as they have done since Frick died.
As a result, the collection is 50 percent larger today than when Frick
died in 1919.
This liberal policy allows the Frick to mount regular exhibitions of
art from outside the collection. The museum is also free to move things
around within the building, although, as deputy director Robert Goldsmith
explained, "This is a historic house, and we want to maintain a
sense of how it looked."
Like the Gardner, the Frick offers regular musical programs that, like
the exhibitions, extend its public reach and generate income. It also
has a shop that generates $1 million in annual sales.
*
The Barnes Foundation has asked Montgomery County Orphans' Court for
permission to move its inestimable art collection, famous for its impressionist,
postimpressionist and early modern paintings, from Lower Merion to Center
City, where it could attract larger audiences.
The Barnes is trying to adapt to modern times in other ways. It wants
to enlarge its board of trustees to 15 members, which the court must
approve, and is trying to generate more income through merchandising.
However, the Barnes is hemmed in not only by its financial crisis but
also by legal caps on the number of days it can be open and on the number
of visitors weekly (1,200). If the Barnes stays in Lower Merion, any
changes to these restrictions must be granted by Orphans' Court, as
well.
Of its annual budget, now $4.5 million, the Barnes can cover only about
$2.8 million with income from grants and gifts, shop sales, admission
fees from 56,000 annual visitors, and tuition for its art and horticulture
classes.
Subsidies from the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Lenfest and Annenberg
Foundations that began in September will keep this year's budget balanced.
Director Kimberly Camp says she still hopes that a financial "angel" will
materialize to stave off crisis. But a fairy godmother doesn't seem
likely.
Would moving the collection to Center City liberate the Barnes financially,
or would it merely transform the Barnes into a different institution,
one more focused on tourism than on art education?
Leo Steinberg, a noted art historian who taught for 16 years at the
University of Pennsylvania, does not believe that moving to Center City
would help the Barnes much, if at all.
"Museum culture has changed," Steinberg said. "When I was growing
up in London in the 1930s, everyone took it for granted that you visit and
revisit a museum to see the collection. Now you have to have something to advertise" -
meaning special exhibitions.
Still, Steinberg observed that a Barnes collection on the Benjamin Franklin
Parkway would create a marvelous conjunction with the early-20th-century
collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
He thinks legacy collections like the Barnes, the Gardner and the Frick
are worth preserving, "but whether they can be preserved in an
economy like ours, where you have to pare down and cut, is a problem.
The Barnes should be sustained, but out of what funds?"
Despite Steinberg's gloomy prediction, Barnes director Camp remains
optimistic that her institution will pull out of its nosedive.
"We hang on to every possible penny. Last year our expenses were 30 percent
below expectations," she said. "We have reduced a $3 million deficit
to $400,000 in three years."
"I still think the guardian-angel route is the key," she said. "The
collection must be protected and preserved, but it's the hardest thing to raise
money for."
Contact art critic Edward J. Sozanski at 215-854-5595 or esozanski@phillynews.com.
The Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pa. started with an endowment in 1922
of $6 million.
Now the fund is at zero.
The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston started with an endowment
in 1900 of $3.7 million. Now the fund is $59 million.
The Frick Collection in New York City started with an endowment in 1919
of $15 million.
Now the fund is $190 million.
Top
The Philadelphia Inquirer
May 4, 2003
Relocation makes sense, but it would be wrong
by Edward J. Sozanski
The plight of the world-renowned Barnes Foundation reminds me of the
memorable comment attributed to an American officer during the Vietnam
War that, in order to save a village, U.S. forces had to destroy it.
Moving the Barnes art collection to a not-yet-selected site in Center
City, as its board of trustees has proposed, is supposed to save the
foundation from financial collapse. If the plan passes legal muster,
it might possibly accomplish that goal.
Yet even if it does, the Barnes will not be "saved." It will
be transformed into a different institution, a mass-market tourist attraction
that will primarily benefit the city and the other cultural institutions
along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway - the Philadelphia Museum of Art,
the Rodin Museum, the Franklin Institute, and the Academy of Natural
Sciences - that long to share the Barnes' star quality.
The collection might survive the eight-mile trip from Merion to the
Parkway intact, but the ineffable spirit of the Barnes, the quality
that makes it a special place, will not. That would be a tragedy, pure
and simple.
Under the plan announced last fall, the foundation will be rent in two.
The multitude of Renoirs, Cézannes, Matisses and Picassos, the
potential moneymakers, will relocate to Touristville, but the 12-acre
arboretum and its attendant horticulture program will stay put on North
Latches Lane.
This might not seem like such a big deal, but in fact these two halves
of the Barnes are complementary. They produce a synergy that contributes
to the foundation's distinctive and seductive genius loci - spirit of
place.
Perhaps you've never heard that term or, if you have, don't believe
in it. But genius loci is real; it's what makes your house feel like "home." And
the Barnes Foundation has been marinating in it for eight decades.
The personality of founder Albert Coombs Barnes pervades every square
foot of the gallery building. His wife, Laura, put her stamp on the
arboretum.
Albert Barnes was not only a complex and combative person, he was in
his own way an imaginative creator. His foundation is a work of art.
Because its program in art embodies the ideas of philosopher John Dewey,
it also represents a significant chapter in American educational history.
The foundation's architectural legacy adds another savory ingredient
to its genius loci. Paul Cret's French-Renaissance-style gallery building,
ornamented by modernist sculptor Jacques Lipchitz, establishes the character
of the site.
Like the art collection, Cret's design is an evocative period piece,
a visual anchor to the time when Barnes set out to establish a program
of art education.
The building, the arboretum and the collection, installed like a giant,
purposeful mosaic in the foundation's 23 domestically-scaled rooms,
generate a magical feeling of refuge.
All art institutions work this way to a certain degree, but at the Barnes
the atmosphere is particularly intense. The frenetic bustle of modern
life evaporates the moment one walks or drives through the front gate.
It takes multiple visits to appreciate this marvelous quality, which
is why Barnes students appear to be most sensitive to it, and why most
resist any initiative to alter it.
The restrictions on visitors and traffic under which the foundation
is forced by township zoning regulations to operate are actually virtues,
in one sense, because they enhance the unique experience the place offers.
The Barnes is small, quiet and contemplative. No one has persuasively
argued that a Barnes on the Parkway could ever be.
In fact, there is only one plausible rationale for relocating the collection
- money. Supporters of the petition to Montgomery County Orphans' Court,
which must approve any change in the foundation's operating rules, cite
the financial benefits to the city of Philadelphia.
These boil down to more hotel nights, more restaurant reservations,
and more taxi fares. But why should the foundation, which is primarily
a school, be obliged to subsidize the city's tourist industry?
If the collection moves, the school must also move, because the collection
is the primary teaching tool. Would the school survive such a transition?
I think not. Inevitably the museum activity would overwhelm the educational
function. After all, the foundation doesn't want to move in order to
serve its students, but rather to service museumgoers.
Why allow a few hundred students to tie up a priceless art collection
when tens of thousands of art-lovers purportedly lust to see it?
This may sound far-fetched, but consider that several rich and influential
foundations are facilitating this relocation. The Pew Charitable Trusts,
the Lenfest Foundation, and the Annenberg Foundation are helping the
Barnes trustees raise the estimated $150 million needed to effect the
move.
A portion of this sum would establish an endowment that would allow
the foundation to support itself. The Barnes had a modest endowment
once, but spent it.
The big foundations are also covering the foundation's operating deficits
while the relocation petition moves through the court system.
At last report, these foundations had raised more than half the money
needed. This is more than the Barnes would require to stabilize itself
financially over the long term in Merion.
In effect, the foundations are executing a hostile takeover by offering
the Barnes trustees a deal they can't refuse - big money to move, no
money otherwise.
Genius loci aside, the Barnes doesn't need to move. Profits from the
international tour of masterpiece paintings that began 10 years ago
enabled the foundation to refurbish and repair its 1925 gallery building.
It's now perfectly sound and historically significant, so why abandon
it? The Barnes even has a parking lot now. It accommodates only about
50 cars, and visitors pay for the privilege, but hey, can you park at
the Louvre? At the Museum of Modern Art?
The canard that the Barnes must move because it's remote and inaccessible,
and because it lacks sufficient parking, needs to be permanently retired.
The foundation is no farther from Center City than Chestnut Hill. It's
no more than 20 minutes by car on the expressway - and you can park
in the neighborhood if you're willing to walk five minutes.
It's also readily accessible by the Route 44 bus, which drops visitors
less than five minutes from the gate, and a bit less so by the R-5 SEPTA
train. As a world-class destination, the Barnes is worth a bit of planning
and effort to reach.
The foundation is severely hobbled by Lower Merion Township, which,
under zoning laws, restricts visitors to 400 a day, three days per week
- and unreasonably counts students from its own public schools against
that number.
Yet moving the institution seems like an excessively drastic response
to this limitation. When classes are running, the foundation could accept
visitors on a fourth weekday - an additional 20,000 a year that would
certainly boost revenue.
Is it truly impossible that the township wouldn't ease up a bit if the
issue were civilly negotiated? Casual observation suggests that the
foundation does not generate a lot of local traffic, not nearly as much,
for instance, as the Episcopal Academy next door.
The decision to move also appears to ignore the fact that under director
Kimberly Camp, the Barnes is gradually moving away from the threat of
insolvency that prompted the plan to relocate.
Since late 1998, when she arrived in Merion, Camp has reduced a deficit
of $3.313 million to about $800,000 last year. The operating budget
still runs in the red about $2 million a year, but that shouldn't be
an insurmountable problem. As the subsidizing foundations have already
demonstrated, money is available for worthy causes.
Equally important, Camp rectified a long-standing deficiency by assembling
the foundation's first professional staff, creating a number of new
managerial positions in the process. (She is, in fact, the Barnes' first
professional director.) Camp also inaugurated a program to fully assess
the foundation's extensive collection, and solicited the foundation
grants to support it.
Professional management has invigorated the Barnes over the last four
years. Earned income has increased, and cooperative educational programs
have been established with Lower Merion Township and one Philadelphia
elementary school. Similar programs with area colleges and universities
are being explored.
OK, some may rejoin, the Barnes has become professionalized, and perhaps
it could survive in Merion while remaining faithful to its traditional
mission if Camp's hoped-for financial "angel" turned up. But
doesn't moving to Center City just make sense?
Robert Hass, poet laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997, can
answer that. In a new book about the Great Lakes, author Jerry Dennis
asked Hass how he felt about drilling for gas and oil in the lakes.
Hass opined that the idea made sense in several ways. "But something
can make sense and still be wrong," he said. "If history has
taught us anything, it's that there is never a shortage of practical,
hardheaded people making one wrong decision after another because it
makes sense."
Relocating the Barnes might make sense, especially to the Greater Philadelphia
Tourism Marketing Corporation and the Art Museum, but it would be wrong.
Not just wrong, but tragic.
However, I'm presuming that the move will likely happen, because there's
too much money at stake on both sides of the table. If it does, I expect
that the Barnes will become the punch line of an old joke: "The
operation was successful, but the patient died."
Top
The Philadelphia Inquirer
June 1, 2003
Story is told on Barnes' great fight
by Edward J. Sozanski
John Anderson, author of Art Held Hostage, vividly recalls his first
encounter with Richard H. Glanton, controversial former president of
the Barnes Foundation.
The date was March 25, 1998. Anderson, a former University of Pennsylvania
English professor who was then deputy editor of the American Lawyer
magazine, was in Philadelphia working on a story.
"I was having breakfast at a hotel with a former student who had become
a lawyer," Anderson recalled in a telephone interview last week.
"Richard Glanton came into the restaurant, looking very dapper and jaunty.
He was always extremely well-attired. And my friend pointed to him and said,
'There's . . . Glanton. We're suing him.' "
Anderson did not meet Glanton then - that would come later. However,
he learned that the suit in question involved a dispute with Lower Merion
neighbors of the Barnes Foundation over a proposal to construct a parking
lot at the Barnes.
Anderson thought the case might make an interesting story for his magazine,
a monthly publication that covers the country's high-profile law firms
and lawyers. He's now a contributing editor.
About a month later, "I received a voice mail from Richard H. Glanton.
It was a unique moment."
Anderson said Glanton was angry because Judge Anita Brody, who was hearing
the Barnes case, would not recuse herself. (Judge Brody lived in Lower
Merion Township.) He wanted a story about the great Barnes fight."
Glanton kept up a drumbeat of phone calls and faxes through the rest
of the year, Anderson said. Anderson eventually produced a long account
of the imbroglio for the magazine's January 1999 issue.
In the process, he found himself being drawn into the much more convoluted
struggle for control of the Barnes that he describes in Art Held Hostage.
Glanton was the central player in this saga until he was deposed as
foundation president in early 1998.
Anderson's book ends with the filing last fall of a petition by Barnes
trustees to move the foundation's collection to Center City.
"If there is one hero, it's Franklin Williams, a guy who really tried
to find a reasonable middle course that would honor the Barnes indenture of
trust while helping Lincoln University," Anderson said.
Williams, Glanton's predecessor as Barnes president, died in 1990. Lincoln
appoints a majority of Barnes trustees. The university opposes a provision
of the petition that would enlarge the board and in effect negate its
control.
"I think if Williams had lived, there wouldn't be art held hostage. But
then fate and Richard Glanton intervened," Anderson said.
"Pennsylvania Attorney General Mike Fisher is another figure who deserves
a significant part of the blame" for the Barnes' predicament, Anderson
said. "What oversight was there? Fisher was Glanton's ally."
Anderson also criticized The Inquirer's coverage of the Barnes story
as a "mixed effort, especially in building up the myth of Richard
Glanton as a reform president."
Moving the foundation's world-class art collection to Center City has
been characterized as a rescue effort to save the foundation from bankruptcy.
However, Anderson said, "it's more like a takeover attempt" on
the part of the foundations that are helping the Barnes raise $150 million
to pay for the move.
"Money, power, fame and ego are driving this," he said. "If
you were really interested in saving the Barnes, you could do it for much less,
perhaps a quarter of that."
Anderson, who has a Ph.D. in American studies from Yale University,
is also the coauthor of Burning Down the House, an account of the 1985
MOVE bombing in Philadelphia.
He does not think race is playing a significant role in the tug-of-war
over the Barnes' future. He does believe that cutting historically black
Lincoln University out of that future "could blow up in [the foundations']
faces."
"I think ultimately there will be enough trumpets and hunting horns blaring
that [enlarging the board] will come to look like a legal theft by the white
establishment from the oldest black college."
The big foundations that are supporting the move - the Pew Charitable
Trusts and the Lenfest and Annenberg Foundations, could still act as
genuine saviors if they wished, he said. "It would be the way to
honor the extraordinary achievement of Dr. Barnes."
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