Barnes Museum

Seven years of bitter battles came to an end in 2003 when a Montgomery County judge permitted the Barnes Foundation, holder of one the world's greatest private art collections, to move from its Main Line hideaway to a prominent place on the Parkway in Philadelphia. Some in the international art community decried the move as a bad bargain, a way to boost the Barnes financially at the cost of ruining its oddly charming galleries, in which Impressionist masterpieces are stacked as tight as puzzle pieces on the walls of a Merion mansion.

For months, the Barnes Foundation art collection has toured cities around the world, garnering praise from awe-struck connoisseurs and international critics. But the return of the collection to its home, and the attention it has received, are not playing well to locals who like the quiet life. The folks who live in the big houses that line North Latches Lane say they are concerned about the imminent reopening of the foundation's museum, with its extensive collection of French impressionist works.

Ride the Ducks, the company whose boat was hit by a barge in a July 7 accident that killed two people, will be back on the river in Philadelphia in March. But the boats will move to the Schuylkill River, leaving their former home on the Delaware River. The new tour route will include parts of the historic Old City, City Hall, the museums along the Ben Franklin Parkway including the new Barnes Museum with a water route on the Schuylkill River including city skyline views, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and America's first Water Works.

The Barnes Foundation yesterday temporarily withdrew its request to extend the tour of its paintings to two more cities. Foundation president Richard H. Glanton said "it's still remotely possible" that the paintings can be exibited in Munich and Rome, but, "I'm not sure it can happen. " The Foundation had asked Orphans Court in Montgomery County to allow "From Cezanne to Matisse: Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation" to be shown in the two cities. The court, which oversees the will of founder Albert Barnes, must approve any exibition of the foundation's paintings outside its museum in Lower Merion.

The testimony is done; the lawyers have a July 13 deadline to file final arguments in the tug-of-war over whether the Barnes Foundation in Lower Merion may lend more than 70 priceless paintings for a one-time-only tour of galleries in Paris, Toyko and Washington, D.C. Montgomery County Orphans Court Judge Louis D. Stefan has said he will issue a ruling by July 31. The court must intervene because the paintings' original owner, Dr. Albert C....

Several other issues involving the Barnes Foundation and its collection are pending in court. Among them: A suit seeking dismissal of the Barnes Foundation's board of trustees. The suit, filed by the Violette de Mazia Trust, accuses the trustees of conflict of interest because they accepted a $2 million gift to Lincoln University from the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, then struck a $700,000 deal with the Alfred A. Knopf company to publish a Barnes book and catalogue. Lincoln University oversees the Barnes Foundation and appoints four of the five trustees; Knopf's parent company is chaired by Samuel I. Newhouse Jr. The de Mazia trust, named for the former education director of the Barnes Foundation, supports art education activities at the Barnes.

Cement trucks, piles of soil, pipes and leafless shrubs are piled high behind construction gates and strategically placed signs that announce the new home of the Barnes Foundation on Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 21st Street. While the museum's move from Merion to Philadelphia has been highly publicized, fewer people know about a similar project taking place right next door, at the Rodin Museum. The Rodin Museum houses some of French sculptor Auguste Rodin's greatest works, and has been open on the Parkway since 1929.

Think Rodin's The Thinker is just a Philly thing? Think again. Neither are you likely to love the truth about Philly's LOVE sculpture. The subject comes up because Google, celebrating the 172d anniversary of the birth of French sculptor Auguste Rodin, has an image of the famous brooder front and center on its home page today. Also, because The Thinker can be found smack-dab in front of the Rodin Museum on the Parkway, and he's been there (except for a refurbishing-related sojourn a couple of summers ago)

Nancy Herman is an artist who lives in Merion The image of a new museum on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, creating an arts walkway, is a compelling one. I can understand why so many people are drawn to it. Yet for me, destroying one perfect museum to create another seems, to say the least, bereft of imagination. Contemplating this problem of the Barnes Foundation and the desire of the City of Philadelphia to make hay out of the collection, I have come up with an idea I think could satisfy all involved.

Missed opportunity I really appreciated Inga Saffron's review of the Barnes museum ("Art in a new light," Sunday). I agree that what was supposed to be the urbanization of a suburban museum turned into the creation of a suburban plot within a city, devoid of context and any sympathy for the public realm. However, as someone who is two years out of architecture school, I think the larger picture is the public's expectation of public buildings. During a recent drive down the Parkway, I asked my sister what she thought of the new Barnes, and if she was disappointed in its utter lack of beauty.

Food can be high art in some of Philadelphia's best restaurants. But why is it so hard to find a masterpiece meal in one of the city's great art museums? We know it can be done, since Danny Meyer set the bar high for arty destination dining in New York with the Modern at the Museum of Modern Art. But don't hold your breath for such haute-culinary inspirations at a museum near the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The Barnes Foundation's Garden Restaurant was our best hope for something extraordinary.

Think Rodin's The Thinker is just a Philly thing? Think again. Neither are you likely to love the truth about Philly's LOVE sculpture. The subject comes up because Google, celebrating the 172d anniversary of the birth of French sculptor Auguste Rodin, has an image of the famous brooder front and center on its home page today. Also, because The Thinker can be found smack-dab in front of the Rodin Museum on the Parkway, and he's been there (except for a refurbishing-related sojourn a couple of summers ago)

Since Philadelphia's Rodin Museum opened in 1929, one small room at the back of the gallery has seen many a fresh coat of paint. When the museum shut its doors for renovations a year and a half ago, conservators took a paint chip from the wall and drilled down to the first layer to discover the room's original hue: Pompeian red. Now, the room is a rich volcanic color once more. "The redness of the room really brings out the fierceness of the figures, which is what I like about Rodin - the edginess," said Mike Stanaitis, a resident of Washington, visiting the renovated museum on its second day of operation Saturday.

Barnes' quirky restrictions Art critic Edward Sozanski faults the Barnes museum for failing to display the best of what it owns to maximum effectiveness ("Disdainful Albert Barnes and his daunting collection," Sunday). Other art critics concur in more insistent terms. As an illustration, Matisse's "The Red Madras Headdress" is confined warehouse-fashion among a wall of miscellaneous canvases. Years ago, when the court permitted selected paintings to travel to earn money for the bankrupt Barnes Foundation, that dramatic masterpiece was featured and captured world attention.

On the day when, at long last, the reincarnated Barnes museum opened to the public, the collection of visitors was so strange a conglomeration that the eccentric Albert C. Barnes might actually have approved. Early Saturday morning downstairs in the auditorium, a private symposium, sponsored by Christie's, was held for about 200 art collectors, museum directors, educators, and auction-house representatives - the very sort of cuff-linked and pedigreed swells Barnes disdained. The first speaker, John Henry Merryman, an emeritus professor at Stanford University, lamented the growth of cultural nationalism, which keeps many important art objects sequestered in "dead storage," like the 30,000 objects unearthed in Greece during preparations for the 2004 Olympics.

By Nicholas M. Tinari Jr.   The opening of the Barnes Foundation gallery in Philadelphia raises two emotions for me. The first is anger at the gross betrayal of Albert Barnes' remarkable gift, and the second is sadness — for something truly unique is gone, not only an art collection in the perfect setting, but an original idea. Barnes established the foundation in 1922 with an Indenture of Trust to ensure its primary function of systematic education through direct interaction with the art collection.

For years, Marla Milgram has been a fan of the Barnes Museum, even taking a yearlong course on its world-famous collection of impressionist paintings. Now, with the museum set to move from Lower Merion to Philadelphia, Milgram has found a way to keep a piece of the Barnes close to home. In her home, actually. She commissioned local artist Jonathan Mandell to create a mosaic depicting the eastern end of the museum's Great Room, with all the famous works of art re-created in tiny shards of glass, tile, and stone.

Litigation lives on over whether the Barnes Foundation should be allowed to move its priceless collection of art from Merion to Philadelphia. On Tuesday, Judge Stanley R. Ott of Montgomery County Orphans' Court in Norristown directed the state Attorney General's Office and the Barnes Foundation to explain why the Barnes lawsuit should not be reopened. Ott ruled in 2004 that the financially strapped foundation should be allowed to move its collection to Philadelphia. In 2008, he dismissed another petition by opponents seeking to block the move.