Of course as the time of Halloween approaches, should we all consider any curse Dr. Barnes may have placed on his collection? Will we wonder if the art is moved, how will it affect (in the end) those who support the move and who can't respect a dead man's wishes? Visit www.barnesfriends.org for timely updates and how to donate to their legal fund

So if you are Tom Corbett.....Who's your buddy? Who's your pal? Rendell? Fumo? Street? Lenfest/Annenberg/Pew? When it comes to the Barnes, it has very little to do with the actual art and what is best for all people, it comes down to power, pennies, and politics, doesn't it?

Why is Attorney General Tom Corbett not helping Lower Merion keep the Barnes? Seriously, there is a letter to public officials in Montgomery County from Attorney General Tom Corbett that is very interesting.

http://www.saveardmorecoalition.org/files/sac/barnes/COrbetrespontopublicofficials-Sept12.pdf

The Barnes Friends say it best when they say:

The Attorney General first assures the Montco commissioners that his office has been 'both diligent and effective in discharging its parens patriae responsibilities as they relate to the Foundation'. He lists all the previous times the Barns Board has been before the court asking for deviations from the indenture.

(All of which have been granted) He does not mention the fact that the Barnes Foundation spent down the endowment on frivolous law suits without any sanctions from his office. (He does mention adversarial actions involving Lower Merion Township but doesn't mention that the Barnes brought those actions and spent millions of dollars appealing the decisions of the court all the time spending down the endowment.)

He asserts that the ruling which permitted the move in 2004 was appealed and turned down by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. This is an odd interpretation of the facts which are that Jay Raymond, a student of the Barnes tried to get standing to appeal the decision but was turned down because it was purported that he filed too late.

Corbett says the Foundation spent over $1,000,000 in charitable funds to obtain the court's authorization to move and has expended another $850,000 in implementing the gallery's move. (One can only wonder what the $850,000 has been spent on - flying around the world looking for architects?)

He then basically says the offers by Montgomery County are too little too late and that he will oppose any efforts to reopen the matter.

SAC says look at the letter...you can under sunshine laws - it was issued by a public official to public officials - Montgomery County officials got it,Lower Merion Commissioners got it, Congressman Gerlach got it...

We further suggest you read http://barnesletters.blogspot.com/ and

MISSING IN ACTION -- THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
By Aram K. Jerrehian

The Attorney General is missing in action. Not Tennessee’s Attorney General, who recently halted the sale of a Georgia O’Keefe painting for a bargain basement price in a matter involving nonprofit organizations. But rather, Pennsylvania’s Attorney General, whose office is charged with overseeing nonprofit corporations and reviewing the actions of trustees of trusts. Inefficacious in performing its duty, the Attorney General is allowing the unrivaled art collection amassed by Dr. Albert C. Barnes to be highjacked. The Powers That Be (The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Annenberg Foundation, and the Lenfest Foundation) have devised a plan to move it from its home -- the gallery building and arboretum in Merion specifically designed for the purpose of art education and the appreciation -- to a Philadelphia site a mere five miles away.

The Charitable Trust section of the Attorney General’s office, as parens patriae, is, in its own words, organized to review the actions of trustees to make certain that such fiduciaries have acted properly and efficiently. That being their duty, the following questions arise:

Where was the Attorney General during the years that mismanagement of the Barnes Foundation brought it to the point of insolvency? Obviously it never reviewed the actions of the trustees to determine whether they were acting properly and efficiently in their fiduciary capacity. If they had, the institution would not require resuscitation today.

Where was the Attorney General during the period when the Barnes Foundation – not the neighbors or the township -- instituted frivolous litigation, which diverted $8,000,000 that could have been used for operations and an endowment campaign. Despite the egregious failure of the trustees to act properly and efficiently, the Attorney General did nothing.

Where was the Attorney General when the trustees, having lost in court and been ordered to pay defendants’ attorneys’ fees of less than $100,000, paid their lawyers $3,000,000 in an unsuccessful challenge to the award? The combined colossal and willful squandering of millions by the trustees of a nonprofit organization were blatantly improper acts by fiduciaries that required an inquiry by the Attorney General. Yet, the Attorney General did nothing.

Where was the Attorney General when, as reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Barnes trustees withdrew their opposition to the proposed effort to move the collection to the City in exchange for a commitment by the state to give Lincoln University $80,000,000 of taxpayer money? We know the answer to this question: in lockstep with the Governor who, along with wealthy Philadelphia foundations, was determined to move the Barnes art to town.

Where was the Attorney General, after the trustees capitulated as described above, during the one-sided hearings in Orphans’ Court seeking approval to move billions of dollars worth of art in disregard of the intent of the settlor, Dr. Barnes? In Judge Ott’s own words:

" . . . the Attorney General was the only party with the authority to demand, via discovery or otherwise, information about other options. However, the Attorney General did not proceed on its authority and even indicated its full support for the petition before the hearings took place. In court in December, the Attorney General’s Office merely sat as second chair to counsel for The Foundation, cheering on its witnesses and undermining the students’ attempts to establish their issues. The course of action chosen by the Office of the Attorney General prevented the court from seeking a balanced, objective presentation of the situation, and constituted an abdication of the office’s responsibility." (emphases added)

The responsibility referred to is the duty of the Attorney General, as parens patriae for charitable corporations, to protect the intent of the settlor (Dr. Barnes). It is not to bow to the will of the trustees.

Finally, where is the Attorney General now, in light of the recent revelation that, prior to the hearings in Orphans’ Court, the Pennsylvania Legislature appropriated $107 million of taxpayer money to support moving the Barnes collection twelve minutes from its present location -- a fact that was not brought to the attention of the court? Why isn’t the Office of the Attorney General investigating this questionable allocation of an exorbitant amount of public funds and the failure to disclose it? Asked specifically by concerned citizens to open an inquiry, the Attorney General’s office has stated that they will do nothing.

The fact is, for a fraction of what it will cost to move, the Barnes has a number of very reasonable alternatives that will allow it to thrive in Merion under the stewardship of competent trustees. But it will only happen if the Attorney General is courageous enough to act independently of powerful interests and private influences and do the job it should have done in the first place. Is that asking too much?

Aram K. Jerrehian is a resident of Wynnewood, a retired attorney and businessman, former Lower Merion Township Commissioner and Hearing Officer. Aram is a member of Friends of the Barnes Foundation http://www.barnesfriends.org and Barnes Watch http://www.barneswatch.org

Here is a recent letter written by one of our VPs to AG Corbett, to which she received to date neither a response or an acknowledgement:

Subject: The Barnes Museum, Merion, PA
Date: 9/14/2007
To:

Dear Attorney General,

I am contacting you not only at the request of the Barnes Friends and neighbors, but because I believe it is the right thing to do.

Please support the new hearings on the Barnes Museum. It is simply wrong to allow the art to be stolen from my home township, Lower Merion, for any number of reasons. Among the ones I find the most compelling? The fact that Vince Fumo is involved. Isn't he currently under some kind of indictment? (I am not a Philadelphia resident, so it is hard to keep up with all the daily scandals.)

Moving the art will destroy one of the most unique collections and museum settings in the world. It will also make people think twice about final wishes and bequests, because this move boils down to will busting.

Philadelphia can't handle the art it has, and is always in the midst or on the brink of disaster (political, economical, criminal), please, please give our art a day in court. It is the right and just thing to do.

You also might wish to read this recent article from the LA Times, as the background on the Barnes historically helps make our case:

One last try to keep Barnes art in its original home
Petitioners give the judge who allowed the storied art collection's takeover by Philadelphia interests another chance to get it right.
By Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 10, 2007

On a final note, here is an editorial I wrote as a concerned citizen in March 2007

The Barnes: Please leave it in Merion where it belongs
By:Carla J. Zambelli 03/30/2007

Have you written a letter to Corbett yet? Why not? Read what Robert Zaller has written recntly:

The Barnes can only survive in Merion

By Robert Zaller

For those of us committed to the cause of keeping the Barnes Foundation in Merion, the title of this article is axiomatic. We know that the unique ambience of the Barnes, enjoyed and treasured by art lovers around the world, could never be replicated anywhere else, least of all on a Disneyfied Miracle Mile of the Arts.My subject, however, is not ambience and historical value, but dollars and cents. The legal argument to finagle moving the gallery collection is that (a) the Foundation is broke; (b) its financial plight is irreparable in Merion; and (c) only a move to the Ben Franklin Parkway can save it.

Argument A is a red herring. Argument B is demonstrably false. Not only is Argument C false, but the reverse is true: The plan to move the Barnes to the Parkway will not only fail to "save" the Foundation financially, but will doom it.

Let's start from the top. How do we know the Barnes is broke? Because its trustees and administrators say so. But the Barnes has not been audited since 1996, and its financial statements have been false and misleading. In 2004, it testified in Orphans' Court that its annual operating deficit was $2.5 million. A perusal of its books by Deloitte & Touche, however, found the actual deficit to be $1 million to $1.2 million, less than half what was alleged. In short, the trustees offered the court Enron accounting in reverse: Instead of concealing an actual deficit, they offered a hugely inflated one.

Deloitte and Touche have looked over the Barnes' books before. They found a total operating deficit of $1.36 million for 2000 and 2001, or an average of $680,000. They projected a deficit of $800,000 for 2002, meaning that the Barnes administration would not only fail to rein in an existing deficit, but would permit it to rise. Rise it did, apparently, until it reached the $1.0-1.2 million Deloitte and Touche found in 2004.

There's a word for this: mismanagement.

You'd think that, with a record like this, Barnes administrators would want to low-ball their deficit. Instead, they overstated it in sworn testimony by a factor of more than two.

There's a word for that, too: fraud.

The only indisputable fact is that no one knows the actual state of the Barnes' operating deficit, or how much of it is due to waste, incompetence, or worse.

That brings us to Point B. Montgomery County has now offered to buy the Foundation's property for at least $50 million in a bond-leaseback arrangement that, without costing Pennsylvania taxpayers a penny, would generate $1 million a year in revenue for the Barnes - coincidentally, the amount of the Foundation's (suppositional) deficit. At the same time, Lower Merion Township has raised the public visitation limit at the Barnes from 62,400 to 144,000. 81,600 additional visitors at $12 a head = $979,200: also roughly the size of the deficit. But the majority of those visitors would also pay to park and buy items and other services. This would net several hundred thousand dollars more.

Between the bond and the revenue from increased visitation, the Barnes could not only be solvent in Merion, even without lifting a finger to help itself, but actually flush.

But, you will say, the Pew Charitable Trusts has put up a $50 million endowment for the Barnes already (subject, of course, to moving the collection). Where, though, is it? According to the Pew's agreement with the Barnes, revenues generated by all escrow funds would provide stopgap revenue for the Foundation. Yet last year the trustees were in Court again, asking permission to tap into their own capital accounts to perform routine maintenance. That maintenance remains "deferred," as anyone looking at the peeled and rusting fences of the Foundation can attest.

So, where's the beef? I'll give you a good guess: It's all baloney. The Pew may have promised the Barnes a $50 million endowment and it may, as it contends, have pledges of another $100 million for a downtown site, but does it have a nickel in cashed checks? Not if those rusting fences tell a tale.

Montgomery County's money, on the other hand, is real. The bond could be issued, and revenue could begin flowing, within weeks.

That brings us to Argument C. Even if a Barnes on the Parkway were able, as move backers hope, to draw 250,000 visitors per year - a wild surmise with no evidentiary basis - and even if the Pew's $50 million endowment actually materializes and kicks in, the plan approved by the court still envisions an annual deficit of $4.5 million - four times the amount the Barnes trustees came to beg relief from in the first place. No comparably sized art institution in America sustains such a deficit. That the Barnes Board could do so beggars all belief.

What is credible at all, though, about the Parkway move? The Pew's now-you-see-it-now-you-don't $150 million? The $50 million in additional funds supposedly to be raised by a Barnes board that can't paint its own fence? The facts are these: There is not now and may well never be enough money to build a Barnes in Philadelphia, and there is no way that such a Barnes, even if built, could maintain itself under the operating plan it has put forward.

That's called a shell game. And what's under the shell? The Philadelphia Museum of Art, its arms wide open to haul in the Barnes and swallow it up for good.

On the other hand, Montgomery County and Lower Merion Township have offered the Barnes trustees the means for the Foundation to survive and prosper, to fulfill their own fiduciary responsibility to the Barnes Trust, and to exercise their moral responsibility on behalf of its educational mission. In spurning the county's offer, they have made their fealty to their Pew paymasters clear. It is they and they alone who imperil the Barnes Foundation.

The court now has before it a petition asking for the removal and replacement of the current Barnes Board. The Board has earned this - by mismanagement, by mendacity, and by the breach of its trust - in a thousand ways. Montgomery County has now filed a petition of its own, placing its offer formally before the court.

Let's remember what's at stake: a unique and irreplaceable experiment in education and democracy and the fate of one of the greatest art collections in the world.

We await the court's wisdom, and its justice.

Robert Zaller is a professor of history at Drexel University. He lives in Bala Cynwyd.

Also read this:

NY Times: Designs Solicited, Discussion Unwanted at the Barnes Foundation By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
Published: September 22, 2007

Last week’s announcement that the Barnes Foundation has selected the architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien to design its new home in downtown Philadelphia is unlikely to dispel the rancor among those who oppose the move. Nor should it.

There are few places in the United States where art and viewer share a closer bond than the beloved old Barnes in suburban Merion, Pa. Dismantling it is a crime.

Montco joins the fight to save Barnes
By Margaret Gibbons

Montgomery County will suffer irreparable harm if the world-renowned Barnes collection of some $6-billion worth of Impressionist art is moved from its current location in Lower Merion to a new museum in Philadelphia, according to county Chief Deputy Solicitor Carolyn T. Carluccio.This loss will not only impact the county, its art lovers, educators and students, she said.

It will also impact residents who, like the late Dr. Albert C. Barnes, spell out their intentions in their wills or trusts, she said.

"People have to feel comfortable that their wishes will be carried out after they die," said Carluccio last week shortly after filing the county's petition requesting the county Orphans' Court that reopen the litigation that allows the Barnes board to move the art collection to Philadelphia.

Carluccio's comments came during a press conference last week on the steps outside the county courthouse in Norristown. Those attending the press conference included the three county commissioners, three Lower Merion commissioners, U.S. Congressman Jim Gerlach (R, 6th), and about a dozen members of the Friends of the Barnes Foundation.

Again... as Halloween approaches, should we all consider any curse Dr. Barnes may have placed on his collection? Will we wonder if the art is moved, how will it affect (in the end) those who support the move and who can't respect a dead man's wishes? Visit www.barnesfriends.org for timely updates and how to donate to their legal fund...after all this is another case of David vs. Goliath, so let's win another, shall we?