Albert Barnes

Reasons to impeach John Yoo's commentary "New Congress should stay focused on war" (Nov. 13) makes many points with which I disagree. I'll mention two of them. Yoo states that the new Congress should not pursue impeachment because "it would cripple a nation that, lest we forget, is at war. " This is not correct. The United States has not been in a declared war since World War II. President Bush's self-declared war on terror is not the same as a congressional declaration of war against another nation.

Just like Dorothy post-Oz, the Barnes Foundation found fulfillment right in its own backyard on Monday, when it announced the appointment of Derek Gillman as its new executive director and president. Gillman will take over in Merion on Oct. 16 after running the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts since 1999. On paper, the 53-year-old Oxford graduate looks like an ideal choice - a 25-year museum professional with scholarly credentials (Chinese art) and construction experience.

The Barnes Foundation, which parted ways with director Kimberly Camp in June, has named a search firm to find a new director who would lead the effort to move the Barnes' art gallery from Merion to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Malcolm MacKay, a New York-based headhunter for nonprofit organizations at the international recruiting firm Russell Reynolds Associates, will lead the search, the Barnes said yesterday. It selected MacKay at its board meeting Friday and Saturday, said Claire Whittaker, outside spokeswoman for the Barnes.

Last month, Pennsylvania's Supreme Court cleared the way for the financially ailing Barnes Foundation to change its rules and move its famed art gallery to Philadelphia. For one critical year, Lincoln University fought the proposed changes, and then relented. Through interviews with more than 30 people and reviews of court records and correspondence, The Inquirer has pieced together what went on behind the scenes that year as Philadelphia politics and power clashed with a proud, historically black university in Chester County.

Judge Stanley Ott has spoken. The Barnes Foundation can move to the Parkway. So what now? Last January, Ott, of Montgomery County Orphans' Court, in effect, told the Barnes and the foundations supporting it - Pew, Lenfest, and Annenberg - to go away and not come back until they could prove that the Barnes could not raise enough money to stay in Merion and that it could make a go of it on the Parkway. They returned to his courtroom in September for six days of hearings that generated more than 1,200 pages of testimony.

Because Albert C. Barnes established it as a school for art education and not a museum, the Barnes Foundation faces no legal or ethical restraints against selling off any of the art it holds outside of its gallery collection, an expert on museum management testified yesterday. Marie C. Malaro, former associate general counsel at the Smithsonian and former director of George Washington University's graduate program in museum studies, also said the Barnes' plan to move its gallery from Lower Merion to Center City "would change the whole ambience.

AS ANOTHER school year draws nears, there may be good news for parents eager to provide their children greater access to art education. Although the Philadelphia region is home to the Barnes Foundation, one of the world's most important art-education institutions, over the years only a select few have been lucky enough to learn, enjoy and be inspired. I hope that is about to change. The Barnes is proposing to relocate its art collection to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway for one overriding reason: to enrich the lives of tens of thousands of students from Philadelphia, the suburbs and beyond.

Re: "For Barnes' disciples, a schism over dogma," July 18: The Barnes Foundation has every intention of continuing to maintain its distinctive educational program. The concerns and criticisms raised by Edward Sozanski were a remarkable and disconcerting change from a column he wrote just over a year ago. He wrongly criticizes the foundation as moving away from a rigorous education approach. He overlooks the foundation's efforts to have its courses reviewed by the American Council on Education for credit recommendation, an indication of the rigorous nature of our educational program.