The Capital Assistance Budget Direct "Appropriation"Stay tuned for a thorough dissection these statements after they are given the “truth treatment”.Some opponents of the move have erroneously alleged that there was a $107 million state appropriation already in state coffers available to the Foundation before it filed its petition to the court to move the Collection- and that this information was intentionally withheld from the court. In fact, the so-called "appropriation" was only part of a publicly available wish list of projects in the Commonwealth's Capital Assistance Budget. The dollar amount of this "wish list" represented almost 10 times what the Commonwealth was authorized to spend and would have required the Commonwealth to issue bonds to raise any of the money. Of this wish list, $100 million was designated for a new building in Philadelphia and would not have helped the Foundation's chronic operating deficits in Merion. This information was not intentionally withheld from the court, nor does it change the fundamental reasons the Barnes went to court in an effort to further its mission on more stable and sustainable footing.
"Thanks to the Foundation's website, interested parties can also keep visually au courant with building progress. Yes, the foundation has installed a Parkway Webcam, updated every 15 minutes. It's something like watching water boil. Substitute water for a spade digging a hole."Read the full post here. Don't forget to sign our petition if you haven't already.
"Day by day, at the corner of 21st Street, it's the city's most culture-vulture public building project, a 'Barnes raising' like no other. Sorry, Albert. Your 'playpen' has, too, gone all Establishment."
"It's well worth it to see it here, in it's original home, before it moves." - stevinazo, New York
"There are plans to move the collection to the city (Benjamin Franklin Blvd).....it will remove the adventure and slight sense of exclusivity the Collection currently enjoys. I fear that the move will make it just another tourist destination." -porotodean, Australia“Extraordinary - Hurry and Visit Before They Turn It into Just Another Museum!” -ItalinanAgain, Washington, DC
"Paintings in which sunlight is seen coming from the right are thus hung so that the sunlight bursting through a nearby window will come from the same direction. Paintings in which the subject is viewed from below eye level are accordingly positioned above eye level. Three similar pieces by the same artist will hang in the same spot in three successive rooms, so that they may be viewed, when the visitor stands in just the right spot, in succession. The sketch that formed the basis of a virtuoso painting might be found lurking playfully around the corner from the painting itself."Read the full article here. Help save the Barnes by signing our petition!
"The Barnes Foundation is a complex of nature, of art, of architecture, that was created by a man who had a vision of how to share works of art -- and the surrounding arboretum -- in a very unique, particular way, where things relate to one another," said Evelyn Yaari, a member of the Friends of Barnes. "There are other assets that the Barnes Foundation has access to, if they wanted to use those assets, to fund the continued residence here in Merion as an intact site....The [Barnes Foundation] board that exists today is not of people who are from this community, or from the community of people who have studied at the Barnes...”
"Artworks still have power. But that power hangs in the balance. Recently, museums have come to resemble entertainment complexes. They are all expanding, and they are all starting to look the same. In predictable, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses fashion, the architect Renzo Piano, who butchered the Morgan Library, is now designing the expansion of the Gardner. But bigger isn’t always better. Museums are living institutions. They flourish in variety. If we persist in homogenizing these institutions at the present rate, it won’t be long before all that remains of the Barnes Foundation—and perhaps the collections of New York’s Frick, Washington’s Phillips, and London’s Soane—will be a catalogue in the way there remains a catalogue of the John G. Johnson Collection (which the Philadelphia Museum of Art absorbed against the dead benefactor’s explicit wishes nearly a century ago). What’s next: Will the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Governor Rendell, and the Pew Family Trusts bring Falling Water to the mall on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway?"Read the full article here. Don't forget to sign our petition to SAVE THE BARNES!
"An un-missable look at one of the art worlds most fascinating controversies and a celebrated selection of the Toronto, New York and AFI Film Festivals, Don Argotts gripping documentary THE ART OF THE STEAL chronicles the long and dramatic struggle for control of the Barnes Foundation, a private collection of art valued at more than $25 billion. In 1922, Dr. Albert C. Barnes formed a remarkable educational institution around his priceless collection of art, located just five miles outside of Philadelphia. Now, more than 50 years after Barnes death, a powerful group of moneyed interests have gone to court for control of the art, and intend to bring it to a new museum in Philadelphia. Standing in their way is a group of Barnes former students and his will, which contains strict instructions stating the Foundation should always be an educational institution, and that the paintings may never be removed. Will they succeed, or will a mans will be broken and one of Americas greatest cultural monuments be destroyed?"The DVD will be released on July 27th, so be sure to purchase it from Amazon.Also, sign our petition to SAVE THE BARNES!
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