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Pew grants $500,000 to the Barnes to help avoid closing
by Patrick Kerkstra, Philadelphia Inquirer Suburban Staff
December 15, 2000
MERION - The Pew Charitable Trusts became the first major Philadelphia-based
donor to answer the Barnes Foundation's plea for financial help yesterday,
announcing a $500,000 grant to help formally assess the foundation's
artistic holdings.
When coupled with a $500,000 November grant from the Los Angeles-based J. Paul
Getty Trust, the Barnes Foundation can now claim to have won support from two
of the most respected funders of cultural organizations as it works to avoid
closing the art-appreciation school and its world-famous gallery of Cezannes,
Renoirs, Matisses and other works.
Together, the grants also give the Barnes enough resources to look for more
assistance while proceeding with a top priority - cataloging and evaluating
its collection of Impressionist, African and decorative arts.
"It is by no means enough to stabilize the organization, but it is very
encouraging," said the Barnes' executive director, Kimberly Camp,
who warned last summer that the school and gallery would close soon without
outside help.
The Barnes is still far from reaching its short-term fund-raising goal of
$15 million over the next five years, and could still be forced to close.
But leaders there believe other donors will take a chance on the struggling
foundation now that it has won what several arts funding experts called the
"Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval" from both the Getty and the Pew.
"I hope [the grant] would send the signal that these institutions believe
in the importance of the Barnes and what it is trying to do, and that we believe
it is very worthy of investment," Marian A. Godfrey, director of Pew's
culture program, said.
The Getty, which has the closer relationship with the Barnes, will administer
the grant. Pew chose to go through the Getty because it wanted to "engage
their expertise and build an alliance with them," Godfrey said.
However it is delivered, tangible support from respected organizations such as
the Pew and Getty is new for the Barnes. After its founder's death in 1951,
the Barnes sank into a self-chosen obscurity and became known in local cultural
circles as something of a cranky, elitist organization, Camp said.
But over the last year, the Barnes has been reaching out - not just to donors,
but also to local cultural institutions as well. Just yesterday, the foundation
announced that Joseph Rishel, the curator of European painting at the Philadelphia
Museum of Art, would chair a new curatorial advisory committee to guide the
collections-assessment effort.
Rishel, Pew and the Getty are all keenly interested in the collections assessment.
While the Barnes has several incomplete inventories of its holdings, there is no
master catalog, and many of the works have had very little research done on them
at all.
"No longer can anyone seriously say that the Barnes is this marginalized,
eccentric, away, little institution. I would venture to say that the Pew foundation
and the Getty don't run around involving themselves in that sort of
thing," said Rishel, who described his role on the new committee as an
"old graybeard" adviser.
The Getty, which is taking an active role in the assessment, continues to emerge
as a critical partner for the Barnes. In addition to its $500,000 grant, the
Getty has lent the Barnes expert staff, and its leaders are lobbying other large
donors on the Barnes' behalf.
Getty president and chief executive officer Barry Munitz said he was gratified
to see a large, Philadelphia-based donor commit to the Barnes.
"Ten years from now, when the story of the Barnes is told and people ask
when the corner was turned, I think we'll point to this month," a
buoyant Munitz said. "This month is when the rhetoric began transforming
into reality."
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