Argott's film focuses on the decades-long battles by area power brokers to gain control of the Barnes Foundation and its prized inventory of Picassos (46), Cézannes (69), Matisses (59), and Renoirs (181) - not to mention its hotly debated relocation from Lower Merion to a site on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
The documentary presents a kind of high-culture conspiracy theory, going so far as to display a cop-show-like "suspects board" with photographs of civic and cultural leaders linked in their alleged efforts to usurp the Barnes' deed and influence the foundation's board.
But something else The Art of the Steal does - and perhaps this is why it has resonated with audiences - is make Barnes, the pharmacological-entrepreneur-turned-art-maven, human again.
"I was trying to bring Barnes back to life, and really set the film through his eyes," says Argott, at the bustling Sutton Place hotel.
"Over the years, he's become a name on a slab of concrete. He's not a real person. And when you're just a name, when it's just 'the Barnes Foundation,' that doesn't mean anything," says Argott, who directed the 2005 documentary Rock School about the Paul Green School of Rock.
"You can see that this was a guy that was very passionate about what he was doing. This was very important to him. So important that he put very strict instructions together about how he wanted things to be when he was no longer there."
Barnes died in a car crash in 1951 - and the struggles over his foundation, educational programs, and collection have not stopped since.
"That, for us, was really the impetus," says Argott. "To bring Barnes back."
