Barnes Foundation

When Judge Stanley R. Ott ruled in 2004 that the Barnes Foundation's collection of paintings and sculpture, worth billions, could be extracted from its Merion home and remounted in a new building downtown, the Barnes set out to replicate the original galleries, in scale and configuration, exactly. This much now is an accomplished fact. And yet, as the new Barnes Foundation opens this weekend, everything is different. Gone forever, of course, is any claim to authenticity.

About 200 reporters, critics, and photographers from the United States and abroad descended on the Barnes Foundation on Wednesday as the clock ticked down toward the Saturday opening of the new gallery on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The assembled journalists toured galleries filled with the early modernist collection assembled by Albert C. Barnes and listened to foundation officials and board members tout the new building and the museum's controversial move from Merion to the city.

With a trumpet fanfare that seemed to erase an eternity of angst and anticipation, the Barnes Foundation's new campus in Philadelphia was officially dedicated Friday morning in honor of its founder, Albert C. Barnes, with executive director Derek Gillman promising to "dedicate ourselves anew to his passions. " "Philadelphia, our cultural star is rising," Mayor Nutter told the hundreds of dignitaries, officials, donors and the consuls general of Italy, Germany, France and Mexico, assembled in the inner courtyard just outside the galleries.

It was not exactly a twist-and-shout moment when The Dance came off the wall at the Barnes Foundation in Merion. Nearly two decades ago, amid incessant legal skirmishing, Matisse's 34-foot-wide triptych mural on canvas was maneuvered from the wall it had been made to fill, and traveled to Washington, Paris, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art for exhibition. It was a tense, court-approved voyage, but The Dance waltzed through it, finally returning to its newly renovated Merion home in 1995.

With a trumpet fanfare that seemed to erase an eternity of angst and anticipation, the Barnes Foundation's new building on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway was officially dedicated Friday morning in honor of founder Albert C. Barnes, with executive director Derek Gillman promising to "dedicate ourselves anew to his passions. " "Philadelphia, our cultural star is rising," Mayor Nutter told the hundreds of dignitaries, officials, donors, and the consuls general of Italy, Germany, France, and Mexico who assembled in the light court outside the galleries.

When the Barnes Foundation opens its doors to the public Saturday, it not only will introduce visitors to a new gallery on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway; it could well serve as a gateway to Philadelphia's mélange of museums, galleries, art schools, historic sites, and gardens. Or maybe not. Aware of the intense interest focused on the foundation's Philadelphia debut - the climax of nearly a quarter-century of hyper-publicity and controversy swirling around the fate of Albert C. Barnes' extraordinary collection of modernist artworks - cultural and tourism officials have been considering how to transform the relocation of an art collection into a regional bonanza.

Like the fabled Japanese soldiers who stayed in foxholes in remote South Pacific islands years after the end of World War II because they didn't know the conflict was over, opponents of the move of the Barnes Foundation to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway battle on. Yes, the Barnes litigation, now nearly a decade old, refuses to go away. This even as the Barnes was preparing for a huge opening Saturday, and as hundreds of journalists from around the nation and the world swarmed its galleries Wednesday for an advance look.

This weekend, all eyes are focused on the Parkway as the Barnes Foundation marks the opening of its new building and the arrival of its extraordinary art collection to Philadelphia. Of course the biggest change for the Barnes — founded in 1922 by Albert C. Barnes as an art and education institution — is its move from a secluded residential road in Lower Merion to the city's grandest avenue. But another change has been overlooked in the excitement: The new Barnes comes with a 5,000-square-foot special-exhibition gallery that is in some ways as important as the building and the collection.

Brett Miller, 47, general counsel for the Barnes Foundation who defended the foundation's move from suburban Merion to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in recent court hearings, was found dead at his Old City home Saturday, April 14. A spokesman for the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office attributed the cause of death to a self-inflicted gunshot wound. "The board of trustees and the staff of the Barnes Foundation are deeply saddened by the tragic loss of our colleague and friend Brett Miller," Derek Gillman, the director of the foundation, said in a statement to the Art Newspaper, which on Monday reported Mr. Miller's death.

Philadelphia lawyer Richard H. Glanton has been elected president of the Barnes Foundation in Merion, administrator of one of the world's most renowned collections of impressionist and postimpressionist art. Glanton, 43, served as deputy counsel to Richard Thornburgh when he was governor of Pennsylvania. He had been counsel to the foundation for the last year, a post that he resigned to become president, but will continue as general counsel to Lincoln University in Chester County.

I take history and authenticity seriously. I have never disguised my defense of originals over copies, or my distaste for the Disneyfication of reality or the more genteel "authentic reproduction," an oxymoron that devalues the creative act by glossing the knockoff with a false veneer of respectability, because a faux is a fake is a phony. ... So how does it feel to have one's core beliefs turned upside down? The "new" Barnes that contains the "old" Barnes shouldn't work, but it does.

There is nothing in the deep backgrounds of either Joseph Neubauer or Aileen Roberts that quite augurs the passion, imagination, and sheer stubbornness required to move an embedded cultural monument and build it anew. Yet that is exactly what Neubauer and Roberts have helped achieve, and on Thursday they will receive the coveted Philadelphia Award, the civic honor established in 1921 by Ladies' Home Journal editor Edward W. Bok, in recognition of their efforts. The award, given for their central roles in bringing the Barnes Foundation from Merion to Philadelphia and finding the financial wherewithal and architectural panache to pull it off, will be presented, appropriately enough, at the foundation's just-opened building on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

When Judge Stanley R. Ott ruled in 2004 that the Barnes Foundation's collection of paintings and sculpture, worth billions, could be extracted from its Merion home and remounted in a new building downtown, the Barnes set out to replicate the original galleries, in scale and configuration, exactly. This much now is an accomplished fact. And yet, as the new Barnes Foundation opens this weekend, everything is different. Gone forever, of course, is any claim to authenticity.

Like the fabled Japanese soldiers who stayed in foxholes in remote South Pacific islands years after the end of World War II because they didn't know the conflict was over, opponents of the move of the Barnes Foundation to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway battle on. Yes, the Barnes litigation, now nearly a decade old, refuses to go away. This even as the Barnes was preparing for a huge opening Saturday, and as hundreds of journalists from around the nation and the world swarmed its galleries Wednesday for an advance look.

With a trumpet fanfare that seemed to erase an eternity of angst and anticipation, the Barnes Foundation's new building on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway was officially dedicated Friday morning in honor of founder Albert C. Barnes, with executive director Derek Gillman promising to "dedicate ourselves anew to his passions. " "Philadelphia, our cultural star is rising," Mayor Nutter told the hundreds of dignitaries, officials, donors, and the consuls general of Italy, Germany, France, and Mexico who assembled in the light court outside the galleries.

With a trumpet fanfare that seemed to erase an eternity of angst and anticipation, the Barnes Foundation's new campus in Philadelphia was officially dedicated Friday morning in honor of its founder, Albert C. Barnes, with executive director Derek Gillman promising to "dedicate ourselves anew to his passions. " "Philadelphia, our cultural star is rising," Mayor Nutter told the hundreds of dignitaries, officials, donors and the consuls general of Italy, Germany, France and Mexico, assembled in the inner courtyard just outside the galleries.

The general public gets its first views of the Center City iteration of the Barnes Foundation on Saturday, but cultural leaders and donors to the new building on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway saw, and feted, their handiwork Friday night. About 875 philanthropists, politicians, business leaders and others went through the galleries, and then promenaded down a garden path to an enormous tent set up on the Parkway for dinner. Tickets went for $5,000 a head - tables for $50,000 - and sold out quickly.

About 200 reporters, critics, and photographers from the United States and abroad descended on the Barnes Foundation on Wednesday as the clock ticked down toward the Saturday opening of the new gallery on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The assembled journalists toured galleries filled with the early modernist collection assembled by Albert C. Barnes and listened to foundation officials and board members tout the new building and the museum's controversial move from Merion to the city.

This weekend, all eyes are focused on the Parkway as the Barnes Foundation marks the opening of its new building and the arrival of its extraordinary art collection to Philadelphia. Of course the biggest change for the Barnes — founded in 1922 by Albert C. Barnes as an art and education institution — is its move from a secluded residential road in Lower Merion to the city's grandest avenue. But another change has been overlooked in the excitement: The new Barnes comes with a 5,000-square-foot special-exhibition gallery that is in some ways as important as the building and the collection.

Can we all get along? — Rodney King   The remarkable art collection of the late Albert C. Barnes has been moved to a new, more appropriate home within the city that will allow thousands more visitors to see it than could have at its former suburban location. This should be a time of celebration. And yet, some want to continue fighting the civil war over moving the art that finally had to be resolved by the courts. It's hard for the move's opponents to get over what transpired, but it's time for them to work just as hard to see that Dr. Barnes' vision is adhered to as much as possible in his collection's new abode.