The Barnes Collection is set to reopen in a brand new building on downtown Philadelphia's Ben Franklin Parkway on May 19th, just in time for the institution's 90th anniversary, but controversy continues to follow Albert C. Barnes's storied art collection from its longtime home in suburban Lower Merion to Center City. A recent flurry of developments surrounding the high-profile relocation have made headlines. Here, ARTINFO reviews the latest.
SECRET MOVES
As if to affirm the relocation's portrayal as a heist by its many critics, the process of actually moving the works from the collection to their new home is proceeding with a level of stealth worthy of the Secret Service. With all the art that needs to be moved — including an amazing 181 paintings by Auguste Renoir and more works by Paul Cézanne than are in the collections of every museum in Paris combined — one would think neighbors in Lower Merion would have seen trucks assembling outside the building by now. They haven't. The secrecy was the subject of a feature in the Philadelphia Inquirer, though the best the paper could do was to track down Robert K. Wittman, a former Philadelphia FBI agent who has had an indirect role as a consultant on the relocation. And even his words are accompanied by the disclaimer: "I am only speculating."
ELLSWORTH KELLY WELCOMES THE NEW BARNES
Some of the museum's moves have been very public, though. Earlier this month, the Barnes announced (and the city enthusiastically approved) the installation of a brand new 40-foot-tall public sculpture by color field legend Ellsworth Kelly in front of a reflecting pool outside the collection’s new home. The stainless steel sculpture was commissioned for and donated to the museum by the Neubauer Family Foundation. Joseph Neubauer, CEO of food services company Aramark, is vice-chairman of the Barnes.
FRIENDS OF THE BARNES DE-FRIENDED
Cheerfulness about the new sculpture was muffled by concurrent news about a judge’s order that the Friends of the Barnes — the group that has been leading the campaign to stop the museum's move since 2004 — pay a portion of the foundation's legal fees incured while fending off many legal challenges to the move. Though the museum's lawyers originally sought payment of nearly $65,000 from Friends of the Barnes, a judge reduced the sum that the group would have to pay to $25,000.
FURIOUS ABOUT MATISSE
The institution brought further antipathy upon itself when it released videos of “The Dance,” a mural that Barnes commissioned Henri Matisse to create inside his Lower Merion foundation, being pried from its place and prepared for re-installation in the main gallery of the new building downtown (see the video below). Blogger Tyler Green was particularly adamant in arguing that the mural was never meant to be moved. Citing multiple letters and transcripts from interviews, he wrote:
"...to the best of my knowledge, 'site-specificity' was not a common term in 1930s artistic practice. However, I think that the art historical record makes it clear that Matisse thought he was creating a mural for a specific place, that 'The Dance' was intended to be seen at a particular site and in a particular context, and that the work that would be viewed in this certain way. To return to today’s lexicon, he considered it the Barnes mural to be site-specific."
INOFFENSIVE DESIGN
Writing in the New York Times, Fred A. Bernstein doesn't mention the Friends of the Barnes's efforts at all, but instead focuses on the challenges architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien faced to make the interior of the museum look as much like the Lower Merion location as possible, in line with the order of the judge who authorized the transition contingent on "a statement by museum trustees that the existing galleries would be replicated in the new location."
"In designing the new building," Bernstein writes sympathetically, "Mr. Williams and Ms. Tsien needed not only to satisfy their own aesthetic judgments but to also honor the ruling (which the state's attorney general is empowered to enforce)." While the Barnes Collection's move to downtown Philadelphia still has some observers riled up, many are curious to see how much of its unique character will be preserved in its new, seemingly more conventional setting — though it seems unlikely that even the best simulation can satisfy the move's bitter critics.
To see the Barnes Foundation's Matisse mural being moved, click on the video below: