Frequently Asked Questions
What Is the Barnes Foundation?
Why Is the Barnes Foundation in the News?
Why Is the Move a Bad Idea?
What Is the Current Status of The Barnes Foundation?
Who Wants to Move the Foundation?
Why Do They Want to Move It?
What Happened between the Barnes and Lincoln University?
Is there a Better Way?
Isn’t the Barnes Out of the Way and Difficult
to Get to?
Why Can’t I Get Into the Barnes?
Aren’t the Neighbors Hostile?
Why Was an Appeal Filed and What Did it Hope to Accomplish?
What Was the Outcome of the Appeal?
What is Special About the Barnes Foundation?
What is Special About the Education at Barnes?
Why is the Art Arranged in That Way on the Gallery Walls of the
Barnes Foundation?
What Is the Barnes Foundation?
The Barnes Foundation, in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania, was
established in 1922 by Dr. Albert C. Barnes as an educational institution.
The art and horticulture collection, assembled by Albert Barnes and
his wife Laura, reflects their aesthetic concepts and are the principal
material of study.
The Barnes permanent art collection, housed in the gallery designed
for it by the renowned architect Paul Philippe Cret, includes 181
works by Renoir, 69 by Cezanne, and 60 by Matisse, as well as major
works by other twentieth century masters and significant collections
of African, Native American and American folk art.
The Arboretum contains over 2500 species and varieties of mature
trees and woody plants, many rare, as well as extensive collections
of herbaceous plants, including lilacs, peonies and ferns.
Read More...
Why Is the Barnes Foundation in the News?
The Barnes Foundation seeks to relocate its collection of art. According
to the Indenture of Trust established by Dr. Barnes to govern the
Foundation, its permanent art and horticulture collection and the
educational program associated with it are to remain in the historic
gallery and grounds created to house them. Pleading financial necessity,
the trustees of the Barnes Foundation petitioned the courts for permission
to move to an as-yet to be built facility in downtown Philadelphia.
Judge Stanley R. Ott granted the petition in December 2004.
The artistic, educational, and legal implications of the petition
have aroused worldwide interest and controversy. Nationally recognized
art critics, historians, and preservationists oppose the move.
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Why Is the Move a Bad Idea?
1. Dr. Barnes established his Foundation as two schools, art and horticulture.
The material for the study of art is in its galleries, and for the
study of horticulture is in its arboretum. The two schools are interrelated,
and taken together, they create a unified whole that speaks to the
aesthetic principles that guide the Foundation.
Separating the art from its natural setting will destroy the interrelationship
that was set up by Dr. Barnes in his Indenture of Trust. The cavalier
decision by the courts of Pennsylvania to permit the violation of the
Trust will dissuade other charitable donors from granting important
gifts to the public. The disastrous precedent established in this case
continues to be discussed in the legal and philanthropic literature.
2. The rationale for violating the Trust is that it is the only means
to stabilize the Barnes’ finances and ensure its future. But
the Barnes’ own projected shortfall of revenue, once its own
plans for relocating the art and developing a three-campus site have
been realized, is four times the present deficit. The Barnes plan will
not make the Foundation more secure, but less so.
The fact is that the Foundation could survive in its present location
on a more modest budget and with a professional development program,
while fulfilling all the purposes of the Indenture of Trust. By neglecting
those purposes while promoting programs and activities never contemplated
by the Trust, it has created an artificial crisis in order to subvert
Dr. Barnes’ intentions and to destroy the Foundation he created.
3. The Foundation’s plan is grossly wasteful. It calls for a
commitment of $400 million to build a new facility in downtown Philadelphia
and establish an endowment. The final costs will surely be much higher.
They will drain desperately needed resources from the cash-starved
arts community in the Philadelphia region. There will be significant
costs as well to taxpayers.
Keeping the gallery art in Merion will cost the public nothing, and
would free up resources for other worthy arts and cultural projects.
4. The Barnes Foundation is, in the words of The New Yorker’s
art critic, Peter Schjeldahl, “a work of art in itself . . .
. Altering so much as a molecule of one of the greatest art installations
I have ever seen would be an aesthetic crime.” Relocating the
art would be such a crime.
‘Recreating’ the galleries as
part of a gargantuan facility in a congested urban environment would
be a mockery. Moving the contents of the art gallery would eviscerate
the experience that Albert Barnes intended to pass on to future generations--
an understanding and an appreciation of beauty in all its forms. To
remove one part of the Barnes Foundation would diminish the integrity
of the whole, destroy an irreplaceable cultural treasure and violate
the intention of its creator.
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What Is the Current Status of The Barnes Foundation?
The Foundation remains in its original location in Lower Merion. In
December 2004, it was granted permission by the Orphans’ Court
of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, to relocate its gallery to a
facility to be built in downtown Philadelphia.
The decision of the
Orphans’ Court permits the relocation of the art but does not
order it. The Barnes Foundation, by all accounts, is going ahead
with its plan to move. Their timeline calls for construction to begin
within two years and for the new building to open in about four years.
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Who Wants to Move the Foundation?
The move is principally supported by the trustees and administrators
of the Barnes Foundation, The Pew Charitable Trusts, The Annenberg
Foundation, The Lenfest Foundation, the Mayor of Philadelphia, the
Governor of Pennsylvania, and the State Attorney General's Office.
Commercial interests also support the move.
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Why Do They Want to Move It?
Proponents of the move claim that it is the only way to solve the Foundation’s
financial difficulties. They also claim that relocation of the art
collection will create greater public access to it. Commercial and
tourism interests expect to benefit from the move, and both local and
state governments hope to reap financial windfalls as well.
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Is there a Better Way?
The Foundation has testified that the revenues generated by a $50 million
endowment would meet its current operating deficit. Its philanthropic
sponsors have pledged to put up such an amount in conjunction with
the move, but have refused to do so without it. In effect, they insist
on spending three dollars to compound a problem that a single dollar
would fix. Moreover, the Foundation’s deficit has been grossly
overstated, according to a court-commissioned audit by Deloitte and
Touche. In reality, the true deficit is half or less than that stated,
and could be covered by a $20-25 million endowment.
Evidence provided during the hearings proved that selling some of the
Foundation’s non-gallery assets in combination with raising the
admission fee will create an endowment and generate sufficient revenue
to cover their current operating shortfall. In addition, if the Foundation
ended its self-imposed boycott of approaching the Lower Merion Township,
it could negotiate in good faith for increased visitation.
The key is for those in charge at the Barnes Foundation to begin adhering
to Dr. Barnes’ intentions for his school and end their long and
self-bankrupting efforts to turn it into a something he did not intend.
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Isn’t the Barnes Out of the Way and Difficult to Get
to?
No. The Foundation is conveniently served from downtown Philadelphia
by both bus and rail, and has facilities for reserved parking. It could
easily be linked by bus to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It takes
less time to travel from the Philadelphia Museum of Art to the Barnes
Foundation than it takes to get from the Philadelphia Museum of Art
to the Liberty Bell.
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Why Can’t I Get Into the Barnes?
The administration of the Barnes Foundation makes it difficult. The
courts have ordered the Foundation to be open three days a week.
Many tickets are unclaimed each week because the Barnes has arbitrarily
decided not to admit persons without reservations. The statement
by Barnes spokesman Pete Peterson that the Foundation is not permitted
to accept walkup visitors by Township regulation, (The Philadelphia
Inquirer, March 29, 2005) is false. For decades the Barnes was open
to the first 100 persons in line, to visitors with reservations,
and to walkups as space permitted. There is no legal impediment to
reinstating such a policy.
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Aren’t the Neighbors Hostile?
For over seventy years, the Barnes Foundation lived with its neighbors
in harmony and with mutual respect. When then-Director Richard Glanton
wished to promote the Foundation as a tourist destination after the
world tour of its collection, he created major traffic and safety
hazards for the neighborhood.
While attempts were being made to resolve these problems, the Barnes
Foundation filed a civil rights lawsuit under the Ku Klux Klan statute,
alleging racial discrimination against the Foundation by Township commissioners
and local residents. The U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed
the suit as “groundless” and “frivolous,” chastised
the Foundation for abusing the statute, and ordered it to pay the legal
fees of the neighbors.
The Barnes administration has falsely and repeatedly contended that
the neighbors had sued the Foundation. The only suit to be filed was
by the Foundation itself. Despite these continuing misrepresentations,
the Barnes’ neighbors regard the Foundation and its priceless
collection as a source of pride for the Lower Merion community. They
overwhelmingly support the retention of the collection at its present
site. Further, the Township Commissioners of Lower Merion passed a
Resolution opposing the move.
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Why Was an Appeal Filed and What Did it Hope to Accomplish?
On January 11, 2005 an appeal from the Orphans' Court decisions was
filed by Jay Raymond, a current student and former member of the
faculty at Barnes.
It sought to overturn the Court's February 2003 denial of the right
to participate in the hearings as parties, i.e. standing, to Mr. Raymond
and other students. It also sought to appeal from the Orphans' Court
decision of December 2004 which drastically altered Dr. Barnes' Indenture
of Trust and granted permission to relocate the art.
If successful, these appeals could have prevented the irreparable harm
to the Foundation that the court’s decision will allow.
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What Was the Outcome of the Appeal?
On April 27, 2005 Mr. Raymond's appeal was dismissed by the Pennsylvania
Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court ruled that the time to appeal from an order denying
permission to intervene as a party is within thirty days of the denial
of intervention, rather than within thirty days of the completion of
the entire proceedings. The Supreme Court also ruled that because Mr.
Raymond was not a party to the proceedings, due to the earlier denial
of intervention, he had no right of appeal from the final decisions
rewriting the Indenture and permitting the relocation of the art.
In so ruling, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania has clarified a previously
uncertain aspect of Pennsylvania procedural law. In 1992, the Pennsylvania
Rules of Appellate Procedure were substantially rewritten to provide
that in most instances, appeals from orders issued while a case remained
pending would need to await the resolution of the entire case. There
were some rare exceptions pursuant to which an immediate appeal could
be taken even in the absence of a final judgment in the case. But not
until the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania decided Mr. Raymond's appeal
was it established that an appeal from an order denying intervention
not only can but also must be taken within thirty days from the issuance
of the order or else appellate review will be precluded once the entire
case concludes.
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What is Special About the Barnes Foundation?
Like an exquisite piece of jewelry, with precious gems laid out carefully
in a beautiful setting, the Barnes Foundation has qualities that
express the vision of its makers. In a very real sense, the whole
of the Foundation is greater than any of its separate parts. If you
change the setting, rearrange the jewels, and encapsulate the original
into a much larger piece, you end up with something that has little
relation to the original.
There is also a profound, intangible experience that awaits every visitor
to the Barnes Foundation. It is the realization of the unique vision
of Dr. Albert Barnes and his wife, Laura Barnes. His ideas formed the
art and hers the horticulture collection, and the Foundation is testament
to their thought processes and foresight. Working with major thinkers
of their day, including John Dewey and Bertrand Russell, the principle
idea is that there is an order and meaning to creative activity, no
matter when or from what culture, and that the order and meaning is
available to anyone who is given the tools to comprehend it. The gallery
and the arboretum are the evidence of their ideas: the school is the
laboratory where you learn how to investigate them yourself.
The gardens, the grounds, the buildings and the art provide the visitor
or the student with a gift that won’t be possible once the art
is transplanted to a busy city thoroughfare and then “cocooned’ inside
a vastly larger structure, separated from its green and peaceful setting.
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What is Special About the Education at Barnes?
Dr. Barnes’ conviction was that the study of art must be rooted
in the forms that compose the works themselves, and the traditions
of the medium in which they are expressed. It avoids preoccupation
with extraneous biographical details about the artist or the social
and political climate that surround him/her. At the Barnes Foundation,
the galleries and the arboretum are the classrooms. The paintings,
other artwork, and the plants and trees are the direct and immediate
material of study.
The full value of the collection cannot be experienced by the casual
visitor to the galleries, or by the student in a classroom without
direct access to the collection. Yet, both of these claims are offered
by the present Barnes administration, which wants to promote casual
visitation as an end in itself, and to include a curriculum without
concurrent access to the art. They contradict Dr. Barnes’ vision
and undermine the meaning and intent of the collection, to whose assembly
and display he devoted such care.
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Why is the Art Arranged in That Way on the Gallery Walls of
the Barnes Foundation?
by Harry Sefarbi
If a collection of books can be seen as a university (cf. Thomas Carlyle), a
collection of paintings can be seen as an art school, as evidenced by the walls
at the Barnes Foundation. Dr. Barnes recognized that art is as universal
as human nature, that art of all periods and places share broad human values
and aesthetic qualities. These principles are the basis for the objective
method of understanding art as developed by Dr. Barnes, John Dewey, and others.
The paintings in the art gallery of the Barnes Foundation are hung to illustrate
aesthetic principles, and not, for example, according to historical periods
or by schools of painting. Hung in groups, basically pyramidal, the paintings
allow the viewer to compare the balanced units as to qualities, traditions, meanings.
In displaying the art collection, it was one of Dr. Barnes’s intentions
to demonstrate that aesthetic attributes may be appreciated wherever they are
found: the qualities that make paintings meaningful are the same qualities that
make everyday objects, and life itself, meaningful. The inclusion of the "hardware" and
other artifacts emphasizes this principle. Divorced from their functions,
the objects take their part in the wall ensembles: the hinges, escutcheons,
etc. are regarded for their aesthetic qualities. They are hung to dramatize
or underline some aspect of the paintings in their proximity: the keys on the
wall next to the Cezanne Card Players fall in line with the pipes on
the wall in the painting; the metal ornaments surrounding the Seurat Poseuses echo
its synthetic drawing.
At the Barnes Foundation, every wall may be understood as a particular "wall-picture."*
Just as a painter’s organization of his subject matter makes up his unique
creation, each wall ensemble is a unique creation, something never before seen
in that way, and like a painting, it makes its own point. The design of
the Renoir walls in Room XIII, with examples from each of his major periods,
is the recapitulation of his career. The groupings of the Cezanne Bathers and
Renoir Family in the main gallery, augmented by the Tintoretto Prophets and
the Giorgione portrait, share Venetian qualities of solid volumes in atmosphere-filled
space. On the opposite wall, the Seurat Poseuses and Cezanne’s Card
Players, flanked by the Rousseau Canal and the Prendergast Beach
Scene, become a triptych embodying qualities of early Italian painting. Room
XII, the "American Room," illustrates the variety of adopted influences
that make up the American tradition; e.g., the influence of Matisse on Glackens,
Fauvism on Maurer, Post-Impressionism on Prendergast.
As the examples in this paper convey, every room, object, artifact
and painting at the Barnes Foundation is fundamental to the design of its art display:
teaching people to see.
|
Harry Sefarbi |
|
December 2005 |
*"Wall-picture"– term used by
Violette de Mazia in her article The Barnes Foundation, |
|
The Display of its Art Collection, Vistas 1981-83,
The Barnes Foundation Press, Merion Station, Pa. |
© Harry Sefarbi 2005. No part of this paper
may be reproduced without permission of the author. |
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