Barnes to downtown Philly? A bad move
Relocating the collection to a new home in Philadelphia isn't a good idea but architects have trouble saying 'no.'
By Christopher Hawthorne, Times Staff Writer

As a profession, architecture has never included many refuseniks, those who decline to work for a particular client out of principle. Architects by nature believe in the power of the new to improve upon the old or even redeem it. Often they think that a building, if completed with enough skill, can make irrelevant the question of whom it was designed for or what it replaces.

Last week, when the Barnes Foundation released a shortlist of firms competing to design its new museum in central Philadelphia, we got a reminder of how strong that participatory strain has always been in the architectural character.....there was reason to wonder how many firms would shy away from the commission.

One very prominent architect, in fact, told me earlier this year that he had received a request for qualifications, or RFQ, from the Barnes but was reluctant to respond. He said he didn't like the idea of stripping bare the 1925 Barnes building, which was designed by Paul Cret and is crammed from floor to ceiling with a stunning collection of Impressionist and early Modern paintings.....Clearly the Barnes had no trouble attracting accomplished firms. And clearly it was not willing to risk the appearance of tepid response to its RFQ by including a single talented unknown among the chosen half-dozen.

That strategy is typical of the campaign waged by champions of the Barnes move. In attempting to wrest control from administrators who have, admittedly, put the future of the institution in peril with flagrant mismanagement, they have lined up a powerful group of allies, including leaders of the Annenberg Foundation and Pew Charitable Trusts. They hope to suggest a cresting, unstoppable wave of support among the city's power brokers, and line them up against the bumbling conservatism of those fighting to keep the collection in place.

Another message the shortlist sends is that there may be some flexibility in the foundation's earlier insistence on re-creating the 1925 galleries inside the new building......What makes visiting the old Barnes so unusually satisfying, though, is not simply the depth of the collection and the way that it was arranged by Albert C. Barnes, in dense rows without any identifying wall placards. It is those things in combination with the ineffable qualities that make up a sense of place: the way the worn floors creak, the way light filters through the trees that surround the building, the experience of leaving the city and giving yourself over, as a viewer, to the idiosyncrasy of Barnes' ideas, some nuttier than others, about how paintings affect the eye and mind. None of that is replicable.

...Philadelphia's museum row may end up feeling like a shopping mall where you can buy the experience of looking at art.

Hello, Pew Charitable Trusts? It's high time someone put you on the hot seat. When it comes to the The Barnes Museum, we just want to know: if the majority of the public wants the Barnes to stay put, exactly whose interests are Pew Charitable Trust really serving?

Pew is supposed to serve the greater good, right? What does moving the Barnes do and so why not take the money they put up to MOVE the Barnes to keep the Barnes where it belongs: IN MERION!. We don't need anymore big box stores, so why do we need a big box to house the Barnes?

Did anyone out there ever read this from ArtNet News:

....But now that the money is in hand, the 15-member Barnes board has hired Derek Gillman, 53, as its new executive director. A Brit, Gilman is currently CEO of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and formerly was deputy director of the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne (1995-99) and keeper of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia (1985-95). His appointment received thumbs-up from Museum of Modern Art director Glenn Lowry, Clark Art Institute director Michael Conforti and Cincinnati CAC director Linda Shearer, in the press release, at least.

One thing should be noted as well -- Gillman doesn’t hesitate to sell pictures from the collections in his charge. At least at the Penna Academy, he sold off several of its European paintings, including Alexandre Cabanel’s Birth of Venus (bought by the Dahesh Museum here in New York) on the grounds that they were not central to the museum’s American focus.....Signs reading "The Barnes Belongs in Merion" are on nearly every lawn, according to the New York Times, and the Lower Merion Township Board of Commissioners has resolved that plans to move to the museum to the city center be "forever abandoned."

Oh swell...so when will pieces of the Barnes Collection get sold off like Gross Clinic and The Cello Player? Can The Pew Charitable Trusts sleep at night?

Almost a year ago now, Pew trumpeted the following:

Philadelphia’s Foundations, Corporations and Citizens Contribute $150 Million To Relocate The Barnes Foundation Gallery To the Benjamin Franklin Parkway

Pew Press Releases

Pew Contact:
Deborah Hayes, 215.575.4810, ; Justin Kenney, 215.575.4816,

Philadelphia -- May 15, 2006 -- The relocation of the Barnes Foundation’s world-renowned art collection to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway took a tremendous step forward today as the Annenberg Foundation, The Lenfest Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts announced the completion of a $150-million dollar fundraising campaign. Sixty-five donors from across the Philadelphia region—corporations, foundations and private citizens—pledged their support for preserving Dr. Barnes’s legacy of art appreciation and education for all. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania contributed $25 million toward the $150 million goal, and the City of Philadelphia donated the land at 21st Street and the parkway for the site of the new gallery.

“Philadelphians have proven to the world that we are a city that values the arts and shares Dr. Barnes’s vision that these spectacular works of art should be seen by everyone,” said Rebecca W. Rimel, president and CEO of The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Here were some of the not so often mentioned names on the hit parade they mentioned last year as donating money to steal, yes, steal Lower Merion's Art Collection:

Jacqueline F. Allen
Gisela and Dennis Alter
Stephanie K. Bell-Rose
Blank Rome LLP
Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz
Comcast Corporation
Dilworth Paxson LLP
Harold E. Doley, Jr.
Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro
Mrs. Samuel M.V. Hamilton
Stephen J. Harmelin
Gwendolyn Stewart King and Colbert I. King
Ira M. Lubert
David G. and Sandra G. Marshall
Robert L. McNeil, Jr.
Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP
Pepper Hamilton LLP
Mr. and Mrs. Raymond G. Perelman
Rebecca W. Rimel and Patrick Caldwell
Aileen and Brian Roberts
Lyn and George Ross
Robin and Mark Rubenstein
Neil L. Rudenstine
Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis LLP
Constance and Joseph Smukler
Brian P. Tierney
Bruce and Robbi Toll

See any familiar names? If you know these names, call 'em up, stop 'em at a cocktail party...ask them how they can sleep at night.

From the Pew site also check this:
The Importance of Place (Trust magazine article)
by Marshall A. Ledger
February 2006
Pew-produced Publications

Moving its galleries to Center City Philadelphia will enable the renowned Barnes Foundation to have the support and public access its founder desired.

“The truth is,” said Vincent van Gogh in a letter written in 1890, “we can only make our pictures speak.” One of the few listening attentively to the art itself—rather than to, say, the painting’s subject matter or an edifying lesson it might suggest or its historical context—was Albert C. Barnes. Born in 1872 and trained as a physician but more interested in pharmacology and chemistry, he co-developed a novel anti-inflammatory drug, Argyrol, which went into production in 1902.......

It's time for people to start contacting Pew and those donating money to steal this collection. Don't we have a right to answers, or are all these folks following behind like some designer herd of sheep?