The Barnes Foundation

Henri Matisse, Le bonheur de vivre -the joy of life (1906)

The Who? Quite. And that, is part of the problem. The Barnes Foundation is an art institution based in the boondocks suburb of Merrion a charming residential neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The institution languishes several miles outside the part of town where anything of note ever happens. Why you may ask should things concern the average juiceling?

The answer is an art collection that is estimated by some to be worth more than $25 Billion. The foundation owns 2500 works of art including 800 major paintings: 181 works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 69 by Paul Cézanne, 59 by Henri Matisse, 46 by Pablo Picasso, 21 by Chaim Soutine, 18 by Henri Rousseau, 16 by Amedeo Modigliani, 11 by Edgar Degas, 7 by Vincent Van Gogh, 6 by Georges Seurat, as well as numerous other masterpieces by Giorgio de Chirico, Paul Gauguin, El Greco, Francisco Goya, Edouard Manet, Jean Hugo, Claude Monet, Maurice Utrillo, William Glackens, Charles Demuth and Maurice Prendergast. The statistics are frankly staggering.

Relocation for the collection to a more well trodden part of town has been planned for some years. This is perhaps not surprising. What is puzzling is the enormous brouhaha boiling up in cultural quarters. Critics, pressure groups and even architect Robert Venturi have been puffing and panting about the move for some time. There has been much incredulity that in these perilous economic times, the city of Philadelphia should spend $200million on a new art gallery, when the thoroughly charming building in which the collection now resides could be revamped for a much more modest fee. Concerns have been raised about the suitability of the new gallery to house such a prestigious collection. And much amusement has also been created by New York architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien and their absurd statement that they want their new building to represent the architectural equivalent of a “Philly cheesesteak”. Tasteful.

It is clear these pundits are missing the point. Plans for the relocation obviously lack vision, and for the solution the Barnes foundation should look to the world of sports. If you want your team to succeed and cannot get enough support at home, just up and move town. Like the Brooklyn Dodgers. Now I am sure the denizens of Philly and the poobahs at the Barnes Foundation would find this suggestion shocking. But if you have one of the best artistic teams in the world do you let it play little league ball in boondocks Merrion for the rest of it’s life, or do you do you place it at the very forefront of the artistic major league where it belongs?

$25 Billion? You can buy a lot of Philly cheesesteak for that.