by Ralph Blumenthal, New York Times Staff
September 5, 2002
PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 24 - The financially beleaguered Barnes
Foundation filed court papers today asking for permission
to move its remarkable Impressionist-laden art collection
from its longtime Main Line suburban home to a new downtown
building that would be constructed with $150 million in
grants from two other foundations.
At a news conference, the foundation's officers said the
sudden but long-awaited move was necessary to save one of
the world's greatest art collections, but any move faces
considerable legal hurdles. A relocation and other proposed
changes would contravene the will of Dr. Albert C. Barnes,
the eccentric millionaire who established the trove, with
an estimated worth of $25 billion, as a quirky,
anti-elitist academy that because of local restrictions
only 1,200 visitors a month can see.
"We're operating on fumes, basically," Dr. Bernard C.
Watson, the foundation's president, said at a news
conference in the downtown offices of the Barnes's law
firm, Schnader Harrison Segal & Lewis. Dr. Watson and
Kimberly Camp, the Barnes's executive director, said cash
reserves would be drained by year's end.
They said the foundation would not merge with the
Philadelphia Museum of Art, which Barnes scorned, or any of
the many ardent suitors that have courted the collection
over the years.
A likely new location, they said, would be Benjamin
Franklin Parkway, a museum-lined boulevard anchored by the
imposing Philadelphia Museum of Art. The $150 million for
the move, Dr. Watson said, had been offered by the Pew
Charitable Trusts and the Lenfest Foundation, in a
proportion he declined to detail.
Under the reorganization plan, the board would grow from 5
to 15 trustees, altering a long relationship with Lincoln
University, a historically black institution to which Mr.
Barnes bound his foundation out of dedication to
interracial harmony.
The collection that Barnes, a sharp-tongued, head-strong
populist, assembled out of a fortune built on an eye-care
product, Argyrol, grew to include 69 Cezannes, 181 Renoirs,
60 Matisses, 44 Picassos and seven Van Goghs, along with
recently unearthed boxes of Rembrandt etchings as well as
vast quantities of African and Native America art, often
juxtaposed in unconventional ways in the 23-room house he
had built in Lower Merion Township, about 10 miles from
downtown. But under Barnes's rules and subsequent court
orders the collection has been hemmed in by intrusive
strictures, including limits on visitors, by appointment
only, and a democratic $5 admission fee. The foundation's
offices would remain in Lower Merion under the plan filed
today.
The petition to break the will's stipulations was filed
this morning in the Court of Common Pleas, the so-called
Orphan's Court in Montgomery County, by lawyers for the
Barnes, including a former United States appeals court
judge, Arlin M. Adams, who said that as a young law clerk
he had met Barnes, who died in 1951.
Mr. Adams said he expected the legal move to succeed based
on a showing that preservation of the collection was the
primary goal of Barnes.
Susan Frunzi, a partner at the law firm of Schulte Roth &
Zabel who specializes in trusts and estates, said a court's
willingness to do so would depend largely on the original
terms of Barnes's bequest and the reason for the
foundation's desire to contravene them. "The fact that
something is inconvenient or too expensive or not practical
in some general sense is often not sufficient," Ms. Frunzi
said.
Mr. Adams said the decision could take a year or more and
be complicated by legal appeals.
The step drew quick support from local officials including
Mayor John F. Street and leaders of the art and
philanthropy worlds such as Barry Munitz, president and
chief executive officer of the J. Paul Getty Trust, a
contributor to the Barnes. Edward G. Rendell, the former
mayor of Philadelphia and the Democratic candidate for
governor, said, "If the Barnes moved to the Parkway, there
isn't a person interested in art who wouldn't come to
Philadelphia."
But the excitement was not unanimous. Nick Tinari, an
alumnus of the foundation's art education program who is
active in a monitoring group called Barnes Watch, said:
"It's completely against everything Barnes wanted. It's
something we had been predicting for years - they're
driving the place into financial ruin and we always saw
this as a means to an end, that is to remove all the trust
restrictions."
Among the unanswered questions is the position of Lincoln
University, the 148-year-old institution in nearby Chester
County that under Barnes's charter has the right to
nominate four members to the foundation's five-member
board.
Mr. Adams said the university could continue to nominate as
many trustees as it wishes, but that the board needed to
expand to deal with modern fund-raising demands.
One longtime Lincoln trustee and Ms. Camp's predecessor as
director, Richard H. Glanton, said that he was not aware
that Lincoln had agreed to any proposal to change its
relationship with the Barnes. And he said he could not
understand how a change could be made without Lincoln.
But calling the financial situation impossible, Dr. Watson
said, "If we remain in Lower Merion, then we probably face
bankruptcy, and that could mean the dispersal of the
collection."
It was not the first time the specter of bankruptcy had
been raised. Shortly after taking over in 1998, Ms. Camp
announced, "We are broke!"
Many of the problems seem attributable to the unusual
conditions Barnes attached to his collection. Determined to
keep his foundation as a school of art education for the
masses, he mandated the low admission fee and organized his
treasures quirkily by the aesthetic and sociological
relationships he saw between them. Officials said they
would try to duplicate the iconoclastic organization in a
new building.
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