"(feedback and reverb)" "(soft dramatic music)" "(Music continues)" "Well, hello everybody." "This is a fabulous day for Philadelphia, and we have some wonderful news for you, and I am so proud to present to you the mayor of Philadelphia, the mayor of arts and culture," "John Street." "(applause)" " Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone." "Now, let me see, what kind of day am I having?" "(laughter)" "Um, actually it is a very, very special moment for all of us here in the city of Philadelphia." "This has been-- this has been a journey, and we're not completely finished yet, but let me tell you something." "It's one of those things that will make our city special for a long, long time." "You will not be able to go to Houston and see the Barnes Collection." "You won't be able to go to Boston." "You won't be able to go anywhere else." "If you want to see it, you come to the city of Philadelphia." "And so it is with a great sense of pride that we come here today so that the Barnes Collection can be moved from..." "Lower Merion?" " Merion." " From Merion..." "Actually, I pause to tell you that I was on a bike ride not too long ago and rode right past the place." "And I said, "See you soon..."" "(laughter)" "In the city of Philadelphia on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway." "(frantic piano music)" " You know, this is a story which should have been told as it went along." "(tape cassette clicks)" " It is the greatest act of cultural vandalism since World War II." "(hard rock music)" " It's been a circus." "You know, he couldn't take the paintings up to heaven with him-- or hell or wherever the heck he wound up." "(Music continues)" " The name of the game is, if you're gonna leave your paintings somewhere, don't let there be a politician within 500 yards." "(Music continues)" " It's America's treasure to be untainted by these attacks." "(Music continues)" " Culture has become big business." "Culture is an industry." "There's a culture industry that requires new product." "(Music continues)" " This is about humanity, but you can't put dollar signs on that." "I mean, obviously, you destroy something fragile when you do that." "(Music continues)" " It's an example of something that's happening all across the society, and this is just one nice little microcosm that we can look at carefully." "(Music continues)" " No one knows this story." "This is a hidden story, and it's a big, big scandal." "(Music continues)" "This is the scandal of the art world in modern America." "(Music continues)" "(cassette clicks and whirs)" " The Barnes is one of the Iast great personal collections in the United States." "The fight now is over how closely the foundation Barnes established should follow Barnes's wishes." "Here were Modern paintings so important that they were the envy of virtually every art museum in the world." "(birds chirping)" " This is the treasure trove of, uh, the Modern art of America and of the world." "And this is the best of the best of the best." " When you go through the Barnes Collection, it is jaw-dropping." "Your mouth falls open." "You can't believe you're seeing this." "And then you go in another room, and it's more and more and more and more." "It's just incredible." " I had an art handler there, and the first time she picked up the Van Gogh Postman to move it, she walked about three feet, she put the painting back down very carefully, and she sat on a bench, and she cried." " They've got more Cezannes than the entire city-- than are in the entire city of Paris." "There's 181 Renoirs, wall to wall." "59 paintings by Matisse." "The joy of life is always cited in everyone's art book because it's such an important painting in the history of art." "Picasso: 46." "Seven by Van Gogh." "Six by Seurat." "The Seurat Models, now, of course, that really is sort of a spectacular thing that there is no equal for." " Uh, simply the concentration of the work of these particular masters is unrivaled." "The Louvre doesn't have it." "The Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum, they don't have it." " If you've been to any other museum, you're used to walking in and seeing these white walls and these paintings hung up." "You know, it's like a shopping experience." " Barnes wasn't interested in a mass experience." "He was interested in a quality experience." " The rooms are intimate." "They are not made to accommodate industrial-strength Smithsonian-sized crowds." " The Barnes Collection is arranged not by period, not by artist, but by aesthetic values." " You can see that a Cezanne and a door lock and some furniture are all grouped together." "Well, he had a reason for this." " It's a completely different way of understanding a work of art and one's experience of a work of art." " We see this collection with a very interesting personality stamped on it." " The Barnes Foundation is the single most important" "American cultural monument of the first half of the 20th century." " From an arts and cultural point of view, it is not a little place." "It's an absolutely essential, critical, earth-shakingly important place." "(birds chirping)" "(record needle crackling)" "(projector whirring)" "(brassy jazz music)" " Well, Albert Barnes I've come to think of as really an extraordinary character, because, I mean, he's-- he tends to be dismissed as this sort of a bizarre curmudgeon." "But in fact, I think he's sort of-- something of a genius." " Dr. Barnes is a particular interest of mine because I'm fascinated that this working-class man from Philadelphia who's boxing to help pay his university fees, how this young man creates one of the most beautiful collections of Early Modern art in the world." " He was a brilliant kid who came up out of the smoke and became very successful." "(Music continues)" " Dr. Barnes made his way into the University of Pennsylvania and then its medical school." "He realized that there was a market for a substitute for silver nitrate, which, at that time, a drop or two was put in the eyes of almost every baby born in America to protect them from venereal disease." " # VD is for everybody #" " The product which Barnes had come up with was something called argyrol." " Barnes marketed something that solved a huge problem and, you know, the wealth that would come from it-- imagine today that you had invented, you know, a cure for aids." "Glackens, a friend from Central High, who was an artist, introduced Barnes to art." "Barnes, being this curious type, immersed himself in it in the same way he immersed himself in any other objective scientific problem." "He wanted to learn about it;" "he wanted to understand it." "But here he was in Philadelphia." "And at that rate, Philadelphia didn't have a clue." " The money people who were very conservative did not have a sense of progress." "Barnes did." "(accordion music)" " Well, he'd started going to Paris, you know, trying to understand what was happening with Modern art." " Barnes's taste is pretty well formed in about two or three years, and he has a feeling that Renoir and Cezanne are the pillars of the Modern movement." "He also then sees that Matisse and Picasso are the continuators of this great tradition." " Barnes was way ahead of his time." "He was ahead of his time artistically, intellectually, culturally, politically." "He collected some of the greatest art in the history of the world at a time when the American art establishment regarded this art as inaccessible to audiences and of little value." " Just think, the Museum of Modern Art was in existence." "The Philadelphia Museum of Art was in existence." "These were his competitors." "The Met had been around for 30 years." "It's this extraordinary moment where one man was able to buy some of the very greatest works before museums were competing, before MOMA and Philadelphia and Boston were actually saying," ""We have to buy these artists as well."" " There's always been this tension in the art world about the Barnes Collection, because there-- there is this truly phenomenal collection that the museum world can't get their hands on." "(car horns honking)" " We're at Sotheby's at a preview for their big lmpressionist and Modern sale." "(background conversation)" "I mean, there's a Van Gogh there which is a nice picture by a great artist." "This is not a great Van Gogh." "They're estimating $35 million." "I suspect in this market, with this liquidity, that-- that-- that-- it will go much higher than that." "It's not Barnes-worthy." "He would have not bought that Van Gogh, but it is a Van Gogh." "Barnes wouldn't even look at that painting." "Some pictures are unattractive and significant." "Some paintings are attractive and insignificant." "This is both unattractive and insignificant." "I mean, the one last night at $35 million was a much better painting." "That was a good Matisse." "I don't think it was good enough for Barnes to buy." "And the Cezanne here is... not even a shadow of a Barnes Cezannes." "This is estimated at $7 million to $9 million." "I couldn't even hang it in the same room as The Card players." "But The Card players would be probably beyond certainly any individual's capacity." "I mean, how much money is in any one place?" "The Getty couldn't afford it." "You'd need some sort of a nation to buy it." " Now 0011." " You're gonna see prices in the contemporary sales that will make your head spin." " Let's start the bidding at $20 million, at $20 million here, $20 million." " For things that are not even scarce," "let alone important." " $35 million and fair warning." "Last chance." "Selling then for $35 million." "(gavel clacks)" " There certainly aren't any collections" "like the Barnes anywhere anymore in private hands." "(soft piano music)" " What is a collection like this worth?" " Oh." "(sighs)" "Look, there's some things in the collection that... one can't even begin to calculate." "I" " I" " I could go through the inventory, painting by painting, and a lot of them I could come up with some kind of a number." "But some things in there, I just-- nobody could figure out." "The Matisse La Danse, nobody could figure out what that's worth." "We don't know." "There's been nothing like it." "There never will be." "(sighs)" "It's worth billions." "I have no idea what it's worth." "The Cezanne Card players, I mean, what is it worth?" "$500 million, or the other one $500 million?" "I mean, we're talking about billions and billions." "(Music continues)" " The initial exhibition of the Barnes art took place in 1923 in Philadelphia when Barnes exhibited the collection at the Academy of Fine Arts." "Barnes had great faith in his native abilities and his eye." "He knew that he was in the major leagues of collecting the greatest post-lmpressionist art." " He was passionate about pictures, you know, passionate." "And there was a passion in sharing it too." "(dramatic music)" "(Music continues)" " The art critics," "The Philadelphia Inquirer and other people, they just trashed the collection." "They said, "Oh, this is not art;" "this is scribbling."" " It was greeted with caustic outcries from the traditional stuffy Philadelphia art critics." "And Barnes was dismayed." "I mean, he was just dismayed to have these provincial yahoos who thought of themselves as sophisticated art critics just denounce him." "I think it must have had a profound influence in his dealings with them for the rest of his life." " He determined that never, never would they get their hands on this art." "(ominous music)" "(Music continues)" " A principal reason that he established his foundation where he did was to get it away from the downtown interests in Philadelphia that ruled the city, from the newspaper to the art museum." " He talks about in one of his books rich people using artwork as upholstery for their homes." "He didn't want that to happen with this." "The other robber barons were busy making monuments to themselves." "Barnes wanted to make something that would educate, so he used his collection to form a school." "He really wanted to be taken seriously as an educator and that this project be seen seriously as a real new step in Modern education." "Dewey recognized that." "He was a very serious philosopher, and one of America's great contributions to philosophy and education, really embracing what Barnes was doing." " If you've spent time at the place and you've gotten a sense of what it's about, you know that it's a very, very important place." "And it's not important just because it has great, great paintings." "The entire thing is the realization of a set of ideas." "Dr. Barnes created this perfectly appropriate building in the midst of a beautiful garden and grounds." "Barnes there assembled works of art from all over the world and from all different times, and he put them on an equal plane." "And he arranged it in such a way so that the art speaks to each other in a certain way." "It says something about humans everywhere." "It says we're the same." "It says that African-Americans are no different than Latin-Americans and Asians." "We experience life in, you know, in the same way." "We show it in different ways, but the basic fundamental experience of life is the same." "This is one of the many things that they say at the Barnes Foundation that makes so much sense-- that art isn't something separate from life." "It is life." "(birds chirping)" "(rock music)" "(Music continues)" " Years later, the artwork had come to be recognized as important." "Everyone was so offended that they couldn't go because it was closed on a Monday and," ""How dare you?" "I've shown up with my chauffeur."" "Well, fuck it." "Barnes didn't really care about your chauffeur." "He had a school to run, and he saw that very seriously." "(Music continues)" " The hatred of Barnes in Philadelphia was fierce." " People didn't like him 'cause he insulted people." " He didn't have much regard for Philadelphia society." " Oh, Dr. Barnes was extremely inflammatory towards his contemporaries." " He liked to fight, but I don't think he would pick on anybody small." "It was always..." " Somebody would write, would say," ""I'm the art critic of The New York Times." "Can I come in to see the art? "" "And Albert Barnes would write, "No,"" "and he'd have his dog sign the letter." "But if you said, "I'm a plumber in New York City and I want to come see this art,"" "he'd say, "Okay, come in."" "(Music continues)" " Barnes never forgot, no matter how rich he was, that he'd grown up a poor boy in turn-of-the-century Philadelphia, and this set him at odds not only with the arts and culture community but with the political community." "He was a New Deal liberal Democrat." "This particularly put him at odds with the family that owned The Philadelphia Inquirer, which was clubbable and muffled and Waspy." "(Music continues)" "(man whistling)" "The Inquirer was the organ of Moses Annenberg and his son, Walter Annenberg." "Here is a bona fide plutocrat, a right-wing Nixonian, as he later would be, ambassador to the court of St. James." "It's like gone back to wearing knee breeches and these ridiculous costumes." "How more ludicrously right-wing could you possibly be?" "This man who liked to phone Richard Nixon in the middle of the night and share jokes together." " Barnes and he were always at odds, always fighting." "The Philadelphia Inquirer was always attacking Albert Barnes for not opening it to the public, not doing the things they thought it should do, but he did the things he thought he should do." "And it was his art." "Why couldn't he do what he wanted?" " One of the problems with Walter Annenberg is, his father was a gangster, okay?" "He went to jail for tax evasion, which is what all gangsters go to jail for unless you can really catch them, you know, with the knife in their hand." " In the end, the feds agreed to give his young callow son Walter a pass if the old man copped out and took a longer term." "So his father was sent off to federal prison and was only released as he was dying of a brain tumor." "And this is something that Walter Annenberg never forgave the Democrats for." "It was often said that Albert Barnes realized this lifetime of animosity from Walter Annenberg because he said nasty cracks about Moe Annenberg and his income tax problems and, you know, the racetracks business and the mob." "But there's no doubt that Walter Annenberg, who for many, many years would dominate the world of Philadelphia journalism, hated Albert Barnes with a passion." "(up-tempo string music)" "(Music continues)" "Barnes was a very, very, very shrewd person, and one of the things that Albert Barnes learned was the value of a good lawyer, and Barnes's lawyer is a man named John Johnson." "Johnson was a great patron of the art, whose art today is one of the cornerstones of the Philadelphia Museum of Art." "Now, this, however, was not as Johnson had wished it to be, I might say." "John Johnson intended his art to be seen as a gallery in his home on Broad Street in Philadelphia." " Poor Johnson had said," ""Look, I'm gonna give you this collection to look at." ""Part of the bargain is, you know, keep my end up of it."" " Well, after his death, the house was demolished and the paintings were moved into the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where they have been a cornerstone ever since." "Johnson's art was, in effect, legally stolen by the Philadelphia-- the powers that be." " They argued that the building was a firetrap and that the paintings were a danger and that they'd be much better off in this new building." ""Let's get the paintings out of there and bring 'em up to our new museum."" "So, yeah, he got screwed." " Barnes was so appalled by this naked thievery that he became determined that the political and arts community of Philadelphia would not steal his art." "(dramatic music)" "Well, Barnes, as he always did, he turned to the best lawyers he could find to draw up his will." "The goal had always been to keep the Barnes Foundation as a freestanding educational mission, not to fold the Barnes into the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and certainly not to turn the Barnes itself into an art museum." "And it was to be housed in the building that Dr. Barnes had put up." " So he wrote this very sort of rigorous document." "He said, "lt shall always be preserved" ""as an educational institution." ""lt can be open two or three days a week to the public," ""but four or five days a week," ""it shall be solely and exclusively open" ""to students and educators of art." ""The collection shall never be loaned." ""The collection shall never be sold." ""The democratic nature of this institution shall be preserved for all time."" " He tried to create a collection that was proof against commercial exploitation." "If it remains in the same place, if it simply hangs on a wall, if it can never be lent, if it can never be sold, the commercial exploitation of it has a value of zero." " He sought to preserve this as a school, so maybe naively, in perpetuity, right?" "But anyone who ever writes a will or anything like this thinks it's gonna go on forever." "(dramatic music)" " And so it was-- Barnes was in his roadster, traveling between his country place and his home in Merion, when he was instantly killed." "(Music continues)" " It was-- it was a shock." "(Music continues)" "And I thought," ""l only hope we can keep the spirit of Dr. Barnes's ideas alive."" " The question then arises, as it invariably does, what did Albert Barnes intend for the control of the great Barnes art collection?" "(somber music)" " So then he died in 1951, and here we have Violette de Mazia, one of the great characters ever, really, in the art world, who originally came to the foundation to give French classes." "And she becomes his right-hand person, his great supporter, his collaborator, his disciple, and she's in charge basically for 30 years." " After Dr. Barnes died, she became president, and she ran it the way it had been run before." " She was just passionate for teaching." "She poured her life into this." " Well, hell, it wasn't a job to Ms. de Mazia and Dr. Barnes and those of us who taught there;" "it was our life." "We were painters." "We cared about it." "It wasn't just a job." " Through the Barnes teaching and Ms. de Mazia teaching, so many hundreds of people have said," ""lt has changed my life."" " All I can say is, the people who took the course loved it." "And that, to me, was a satisfactory reason to perpetuate the Barnes as it was, which was a school, not a museum-- that's very clear in the trust indenture-- and that the paintings were hung" "for didactic purposes, and not merely because it would be the convenience of people walking into a museum." " Well, almost immediately after Barnes's death, the foundation found itself subject to a frontal assault by none other than The Philadelphia Inquirer publisher, multimillionaire Walter Annenberg." " Annenberg starts this campaign:" ""Oh, the Barnes Foundation is not letting the public in." "They're violating their tax status as a charity."" " Annenberg had all the money in the world, and he was determined to crush the Barnes, and he didn't dare try to crush the Barnes when the old man was still alive and was a tough nut to begin with." "(Music continues)" " When they opened up the foundation" "I never knew it was in the works." "The day they opened it, she called me up and said," ""They're letting the public in."" "I think she was in tears." "Well, these people crowded in." "I mean, one guy was out in an hour." "He said he saw enough fat ladies for a day." "And that was-- that's the art lover." " Annenberg is seen as the guy who got the attorney general and the state supreme court to make the Barnes Foundation be open to the public at times that it wasn't supposed to be." "And so Annenberg is seen as taking the first little crack at Dr. Barnes' trust." " Once everybody's dead, they'll do what they want, and nobody cares about what it was." "That's why it was important to me to emphasize that it's a school." " Well, I think he always was worried that the artwork would become so valuable that it would overpower his educational ideas." " You know, people see art, what do they think?" "Paintings, money, tourism." "It's become just the norm for art to be traded for blockbuster shows, you know, to trade the art, move it around, you know, make money off of it, and there is all this great art" "that the museum world doesn't have access to." " We had requests from various museums around the country." ""Would you please lend us two paintings?" ""We'll pay all the costs, and we'll send armed guards and whatever."" "And de Mazia said, right there in the document, the paintings will never be removed from the walls, absolutely no, never." "De Mazia was considered to be the last living direct apostle of Dr. Barnes and his method, and everything went according to Ms. de Mazia's wishes." " The atmosphere had always been," ""It's for the classes;" "this is what it's for."" "Everything about it was personal." "De Mazia was a real personality." "It was a handmade thing in a machine world as long as she was alive." "(dramatic music)" "(Music continues)" " When she died, she was, as I said, 89." "She died on a Friday in September at 1:40." "(chuckles)" " Well, everything changed because Ms. de Mazia died, and with her death, the question then is, whose hands would inherit the Barnes?" "Barnes was married, but they had no children, so no doubt the academy assumed, no doubt the University of Pennsylvania assumed that they would inherit, eventually, control of the foundation." "However, Barnes kept changing his will-- of this, there's no question-- but he just didn't tell anyone this." " Albert Barnes created the foundation with five trustees with the power to control the foundation." "After the last of the trustees that he had appointed died, ultimately they elect de Mazia." "Now, the rub then became, "Who gets to appoint them? "" " As everyone knows, Barnes was a misanthrope." "He had his delicate ego badly bruised by the Philadelphia establishment, and he had a long and difficult memory." " Ultimately, his will left the control of the great Barnes art to Lincoln University." " When he got Lincoln there, it was just the farthest possible imaginable thing in the social scene as it then existed." " Lincoln was, if you were a black man in America, one of the places to go to get a really quality education at a time when there was segregation and whatnot." " My father was president of Lincoln University, and he befriended Albert Barnes, and from that friendship began a relationship between Lincoln University and the Barnes collection." "Barnes was one of those rare Americans who was openhearted about black people." "You know, in his factory, he had an integrated working force when almost no industrial operation in the whole of the country had that." "And he thought, maybe in the back of his mind," ""How can I stick my finger in the eyes" ""of the Philadelphia art establishment?" ""I'll show 'em." "I'll give it to this little black college."" " Whether, you know, his long-range objectives were, number one, just getting revenge on the Philadelphia establishment," "I think he said," ""Boy, you know, I can trust these people." ""They're not part of that awful establishment that I hate so much."" " Fast forward to 1990," "Lincoln is this state school that doesn't get enough state funding, that can't raise enough money, and if you're a trustee of Lincoln, why wouldn't you use this new asset that you have to raise some money for your school?" " Franklin Williams, this diplomat/lawyer, was made the president of the Barnes Foundation, and he really understood, as probably most of the Lincoln trustees didn't, that he and Lincoln were becoming custodians of the world's greatest" "post-lmpressionist art collection." "(bluesy rock music)" "(Music continues)" " Franklin Williams established an art advisory committee of notable people from around the country in the art world." " Franklin Williams wanted to pick the right people, so I went back, and I drew up a list with all museum people but very well-known ones." " Lincoln University felt it really should look to the outside to help it figure out what to do with this place, which is a perfectly reasonable thing for them to have done." " It would be a resource to use as they chose, understanding the terms and conditions of Barnes' trust, and it would have just made both of them flourish." "It would be..." "It's indescribable what might have happened." "(Music continues)" " Also on the Lincoln board at this time was this incredibly ambitious lawyer named Richard H. Glanton." "He has designs on being mayor of Philadelphia, maybe even senator." "His ambitions know no limit." "Glanton has already been going around telling people that he's going to run the Barnes." "But as I say, between Glanton and the Barnes and perhaps many of his other ambitions is Franklin Williams." "What no one could have anticipated is that almost immediately upon becoming president of the Barnes Foundation, diplomat/lawyer Franklin Williams discovers he has a very virulent form of cancer and within the year is dead." "(Music continues)" " When I came there, the perception was that this dummy is fresh meat for us to devour, and he's just a smart political guy, but he doesn't know anything about art, so we'll rule while he reigns." "And..." "(chuckles)" "I was not born that way." " I got a call from Richard Glanton, who said, "Why don't I meet you" ""at the Union League and let me buy you lunch and pick your brain? "" "So I said, "Sure, why not? "" "He said, "I've got big plans for the Barnes." "We're gonna make a lot of money."" "And I said, "Why do you need money?" ""We've got the original $10 million in there." ""It's yielding a couple hundred thousand a year," ""more than we need to run the place." "What's the point of all of this? "" "And Glanton says," ""I'm gonna put this whole thing on the map." ""I'm gonna do whatever it takes" ""to build up as much money as I can get." ""Don't worry, Dave." "I've got it all figured out."" ""Oh, okay." ""Well, you know, if that's the way you're gonna run it..." ""You're a majority of the trustees now." "But thanks for lunch."" " Mrs. de Mazia, God bless her soul, really did the best she could, but for 50 years following Barnes's death, or 40 years, the money was mismanaged." "The building had water running in it." "All of the windows were just rotting." "The HVAC system didn't work." " We've got conservation problems." "We've got, you know-- we need climate control, all of which, frankly, as a museum person, seemed perfectly reasonable." "At the time, when we were on this little committee, it was very clear that you could work out a plan to try to raise money, 'cause everybody in the world would want to save the Barnes Foundation." "So that was what we suggested, and that's precisely what Richard Glanton, et al, did not want to do." "They were about to figure out how to do something that was clearly illegal and unethical, which is what they did." "(Music continues)" " Richard loved being president of the Barnes, and he loved all of the sidelights of that:" "hobnobbing with the rich and the famous, including multimillionaire Walter Annenberg." " So I called Walter and said that," ""I'd like to just talk to you about my ideas at Barnes,"" "and he said, "Great."" " Walter Annenberg, who was a piece of work, was also an art collector." "First-rate collection but certainly not an adventurous collection, certainly not an adventurous thinker." " In the last several months, I've had two Japanese interests after me to sell my whole collection." "My only response has been," ""You're discussing members of my family, and I'm hardly about to sell members of my family."" " Couldn't be more ironic." "Glanton and Walter Annenberg hit upon the idea of selling Barnes' art." " I said, "l want to raise the funds" ""to restore the gallery" ""to ensure the long-term preservation of the collection,"" "and the way that I would do this would be to deaccession a number of paintings to raise sufficient cash to cover the cost of the restoration."" "And he immediately said, "That's a great idea."" " You know, Glanton basically did for Annenberg what he wanted to do." "He made it totally accessible to him, and he was gonna rip it apart for him." "Up until then," "Annenberg was coming in trying to undo from the outside." "Now what you had was trustees, the Barnes trustees from the inside." "The Barnes board itself was saying," ""Oh, we're in dire financial straits." ""We need to undo this indenture." "Let us sell the collection."" " I have nothing against buying and selling art." "If there's no legal reason not to do it, it's fine." "Dr. Barnes did not say that was okay, and therefore it isn't discussable as far as I'm concerned." " We were outraged." "Glanton didn't care." "And then when we objected, he fired the whole Art Advisory Board." " The response of the art world was fast and furious." "There was a huge uproar." "Anybody with any familiarity of the cultural world knew that it was absolutely the last thing that anyone with any knowledge of a cultural organization would do." " So even though there was sort of a big push to do that, didn't happen, because the museum community got against it." " Having now failed to convince either the court or his partners on the Barnes board to allow him to sell art or to rent art or deaccession art, he now comes up with a moment of genius." "(frantic string music)" " When Richard started publicly saying that the foundation had to raise money-- and this is where he started this suggestion, the fiasco plan of announcing that he would sell some of the art-- in order to justify that, he said," ""Come on, I'll show you."" "And so I took a tour with him from basement to attic of the foundation and wrote a story about it." " And so day after day, week after week, usually with Richard Glanton as the humble boy scout taking Lucinda Fleeson, girl reporter, through the boiler room and on top of the roof, readers of The Inquirer were treated to the saga" "of the poor old Barnes Foundation, and it was gonna take millions of dollars to fix up the Barnes." "Otherwise these paintings would just-- they were just gonna fall off the wall." " We're working on fear here, right?" "Weapons of mass destruction, leaky roof." "It's funny, but it sounds like the Johnson story." ""The building's falling apart."" "That was the beginning of the story of why we can undermine Dr. Barnes's will." "(rock music)" " Thank you to Lucinda Fleeson and The Inquirer, he has this marvelous excuse to persuade the court that the building is in such disrepair that it's going to have to be closed down for a couple of years." ""Let me take the Barnes art on tour and charge other museums for the privilege."" " As a lawyer, there is a provision in the trust that provided that in fact you could change." "It's called cy pres." "You can change a provision if it's necessary to carry out the donor's intent to the least extent possible." " If you can't do exactly the terms of the will-- there's the term-- French term cy pres, cy pres c'est possible-- as near as possible do what the donor wanted." "And how in the world can they fucking think that this is near as possible" "This is exactly what he didn't want." "Every...every ounce of it is what he didn't want." " I was told by everybody that it couldn't be done;" "it wouldn't be done." "Nobody will do it." "I said, "Well..." "(chuckling)" "We're gonna do this."" " # You do what you have to #" "# And not what you're told #" "(Music continues)" " Given the quality of the collection, it created headlines wherever it went." "It created crowds wherever it went and it created money wherever it went." "And all of that was like shoveling coal into the furnace until the fire was raging." "(Music continues)" " Everywhere the art went, Richard Glanton went, and everywhere that Richard Glanton went, he was honored." " I was treated like a conquering hero in Paris and Toronto and Fort Worth, Texas." "Dinner, seated at the table with Princess Di." "An invitation for her to come to the Barnes." "Letters from her." "It was literally unbelievable." "I think it was the greatest exhibition in the history of Western civilization." "(Music continues)" "(music fades)" "(piano and orchestral music)" " The Barnes art now returned to great fanfare and a... well, I was gonna say the biggest finger in the eye that you could imagine, but I think that was saved for later, but... (Music continues)" "A showing at the Philadelphia Museum, the archenemy, Satan's lair, reveling in their possession, temporary though it was, of the Barnes art." " This was the great slap to Barnes, was that," ""Well, we have to show the paintings in Philadelphia too."" "Well, why?" "Basically, it raised a lot of money for the art museum." "They had a big Barnes show at the art museum here, and they made a lot of money on the back of it." " Everybody involved in this had their own interests." "The only person whose interest had no champion was Albert Barnes." "Everyone had abandoned him." " You know, the paintings come back from the tour, and Glanton wants to have this big party." "Glanton's using it exactly the way" "Barnes didn't want it to be used, which was as a sort of social backdrop thing." "I mean, we're talking all of the, like, wealthy people from Philadelphia, with their Rollses and all their stuff, came to the party, and they're just all up and down tiny, little Latches Lane." " The Philadelphia swells came down in droves." "And once again, Richard Glanton basked in the reflected glow of the Barnes art." "But what he didn't reckon with was the neighbors." " Chaos." "It was absolute chaos." "Nothing had ever happened like that in the 18 years we had lived here." "Was this the first of many?" "Was this-- our neighborhood has now changed to this?" "(Music continues)" " The Barnes Foundation has been here for over 70 years," "lived in perfect harmony with the neighborhood for all these years, and all of a sudden, it becomes the Super Bowl venue for art." " This is from Quebec also." "This is three buses today from Quebec." " Our neighborhood was completely clogged top to bottom." "Five days a week, thousands of people a week were coming and parking and eating on my lawn and parking in my driveway." "I mean, it happened to all of us." " My kitchen sink faces the Barnes, and I guess I spend half my life at the sink." "So every time I saw a bus," "I would run out with the camera and videotape it." "I don't know how you pronounce that, but that's how I feel." "Richard Glanton referred to me that he was being harassed by the KGB." "That was me" "I felt very powerful for a moment." " I'd brought the Barnes out of the Dark Ages and opened it up, and it's weird that a few people refused to accept that." " We went to the township to see about fast-tracking permission to build a parking lot." "And Richard very much wanted this parking lot fast-tracked at this point." " You're operating a commercial museum in a residential neighborhood." "And putting a parking lot in, at that time, would have made it easier for you to operate a commercial museum in a residential neighborhood." " Questions?" " We went to a township meeting." "All the neighbors went to the township meeting, and people made speeches at the meeting." "I got up, and in my speech," "I said, I understood now how a carpetbagger works." "And a carpetbagger is someone who comes in from another jurisdiction, and, in fact, they call judges carpetbaggers when they do that, and referring to Mr. Glanton and his management team." "I referred to Mr. Glanton and his people, and that was the end of it." " The township said that they couldn't fast-track a parking lot." "Richard was not happy with that response." " It wasn't about the cars or the traffic." "It was about something else." "It was about being hostile." "I don't know why." "You know, I just said, "This is enough." "I mean, I'm just gonna bring this lawsuit."" "(frantic instrumental music)" " Dr. Herman brought me to his house, and he said, "Bob, I have something, but I need you to sit down."" "I had no idea what he was talking about." "Because of my use of the word "carpetbagger"" "and "his people,"" "they used those two phrases as the basis for a civil rights action." " Glanton ordered the Barnes's lawyers to begin preparations for a suit against the Lower Merion township commissioners and the neighbors under the federal Ku Klux Klan Act." " They accused us of conspiracy with the township to deprive them of their rights but motivated by racial grounds." " They compared not only me, but they compared others of us to Hitler." "They showed pictures of people being lynched in South Carolina and associated that with the neighbors." "And I'm thinking, "What the devil did I do?" "I got up, and I was concerned that I have buses and I can't get out of my driveway." "What am I doing here in the middle of something like this, being called Hitler? "" " All over Philadelphia in law firms hither and thither, the legal fees on all sides mounted." "And the Barnes's already skimpy endowment was being drained." "It was just being drained." " They get all this money spent sending the collection to Paris and Tokyo and God knows where and... and made a huge pile of money, which then was all..." "I don't want to say "pissed away."" "I should say something more appropriate." "You can cut that one out, okay?" " Richard Glanton thought that we were just gonna fold and say, "We drop out." "We're dropping out."" "He just picked the wrong neighbors." " Eventually, the entire case was thrown out." "Judge Brody said there was not one scintilla of racial animus in any of the evidence the Barnes presented." " In this particular situation, there's not ever a comment made about us that does not-- preceded by the word "hostile."" " Their PR firm has maintained that we harassed them." "The PR firm has maintained that we sued them." "I mean, if that's what people are gonna believe, that we harassed them and that we are devious, terrible people... we've given up trying." " Over a zoning board issue was the Ku Klux Klan Act invoked." "And the mischief that followed is incalculable." "I mean, thus the whole story turns on the tale of a 52-car parking lot." "The president of Lincoln University is desperate to get Glanton out of there, and in her fury over the dismissal of the Ku Klux Klan suit, she prepared a draft letter to the trustees of the Barnes Foundation suggesting that it was time to rotate the presidency." " People can have their own views." "They're entitled to them." "But, uh...my story is that it was a second rebirth of Barnes during my tenure as president." "I tried to do something real quick that was different, because it had to be done." "And I knew I had no time to mess around because" "What was that dog's name?" "Cerebus, who guards the gates of hell" "Was after me." "I had been approached about turning the Barnes over to the Philadelphia Museum of Art on at least two occasions, and I was approached about turning it over to some other institutions on other occasions." "But I had no intention of reigning while somebody else ruled, and that was, in their view, the end of me." "They laid the groundwork, saying the money that was spent on the lawsuits ruined the Barnes, which is not true." "It had more money than it had when I came in and a new building." " Curiously, Glanton said to me at the time that-- and this is not quite how he put it-- but that he was the bulwark against the establishment stealing the Barnes." "And in a perverse way," "I think Richard Glanton was absolutely correct about that." " I was just like, "Okay, here are the keys." ""Go do your master's bidding." "Run it into the ground, into a wall."" "And literally, that's what I wrote the attorney general." "I said, "They're gonna run it into a brick wall."" " I'm sure I saw the letter." "I'm not gonna say that his predictions were accurate, per se." "But once he left, there was not the same level of drive with those who remained." "And in the long run, I thought that was gonna continue to drag the Barnes down." "(dramatic music)" "(Music continues)" "(soft piano music)" " And so there we were, with the Barnes board, minus Richard Glanton, with the Barnes's already parlous endowment reduced to virtually nothing." " Barnes Foundation, without any funds, without an effective leadership, is, you know, sitting in this building as a sitting duck." "So these forces began to line up and work towards something that had absolutely nothing to do with what Barnes wanted, with the agreement between Barnes and the state of Pennsylvania embodied in a legal document." "All of that was sort of left in a drawer while politicians and billionaires and cultural mavens and foundations got busy." " The Barnes was given just enough money by the foundations so that they could claim that they were trying to help the poor ol' Barnes out." "But that was never, in my opinion, the goal." " Foundations are non-profit corporations." "We're used to hearing about corporate takeovers with for-profit corporations." "But this was a non-profit corporate takeover." "And the first thing you have to do is remake the board of trustees so you have a compliant board who is on your side." " In the period after Richard Glanton was out, the foundation was just sort of puttering along." "It was still controlled by Lincoln." "Four of the five board members were Lincoln board members." "The president of the board of trustees put on the board by Lincoln was Bernie Watson." " Watson was very politically connected, a professional foundation executive, and he was the chairman of the City Convention Center, the Tourist Bureau." " In the midst of that steps up these Philadelphia foundations." "They were going to help them raise" "I think it was $150 million." "From the very beginning," "Pew's thought was," ""Well, we're gonna give you money." "We're gonna get something out of it." "We want some control."" " It was pretty clear to me they weren't just gonna give 50, 70, $100 million without getting control of the Barnes board." " Well, if you're Bernie Watson, your duty was to maintain a connection between Barnes and Lincoln, because that was part of the trust indenture." "I mean, what's Lincoln have to offer for Bernie Watson?" "He makes his living from the sort of institutions and people who want this thing to happen." "Watson went ahead and negotiated a deal that cut Lincoln out." "The only way for a Pew or any other foundation to get control, to be able to place board members, was for the indenture to be changed, for them to go to court and change the rules that Barnes laid down." "Lincoln didn't have a clue." "Watson and these Philadelphia foundations had a plan to basically push them aside." "Right?" "They flipped out." "They got an attorney and tried to intervene and stop it." " There were enough people who were making noises that the plan was starting to fall apart to the point where more aggressive tactics needed to be employed." " Ed Rendell, the governor at the time, starts to put pressure on Lincoln, okay?" "He's the governor." "He controls the purse strings of this state-affiliated institution." "He said, "Well, look, you know," ""Lincoln, you could be in, you know, a rosy position" ""if you go along with this thing." "What have you gotten out of Barnes so far? "" "Along with Rendell, the attorney general decides that he's gonna help pressure Lincoln a little bit." "And the thing that he has is the ability to say," ""You get nothing, Lincoln, if you guys don't play along."" " I don't know that we were ever as direct as saying," ""We can take this away from you,"" "because that would take a court to do that, but I had to explain to them that, you know, maybe the attorney general's office would have to take some action involving them that might have to change the complexion of the board." "And whether I said that directly or I implied it," "I think they finally got the message." "And when they say-- you mentioned it." "It was portrayed that I was the bad cop and the governor was the good cop." "The governor had the money." "And the governor had some money he was willing to add onto it, so that automatically made him good cop." "There was some money proposed to-- for Lincoln to offset some of the perhaps perceived losses that they might have." " As I recall, it was about $40 million." "And I said, "You tell me what you want to spend the $40 million on."" " That's not a whole lot of money to some schools, but it's a whole lot of money to Lincoln University." "I think that was part of the price of Lincoln letting go." " They weren't blackmailed into agreeing with us at all." "If you ask the board," "I made it abundantly clear to Mr. Scott and others that they were getting this money regardless." " They pressured the shit out of 'em." "And in the end, they caved." "What the Philadelphia foundations did is what takes place all the time in the corporate world, which is to take over the board by adding new positions on the board." "You don't go in and kill all the board members that are there." "You just put ten more on so that those five no longer have a majority." "Watson negotiated a deal that watered down" "Lincoln's participation in the management of the foundation." "Yeah, he betrayed Barnes, I think, first." "But, you know, to the extent Lincoln put people on the board thinking, well, you know, you're going to keep Lincoln in the picture, he betrayed them too." " They sold Lincoln University for a shekel." "They sold it down the creek." "And they had no right to do that." " And the Philadelphia establishment-- who he determined that never would they get their hands on this art-- now have it in their hands." " From the public side, from what, you know, me and every other newspaper reader, the first thing we got was," ""Oh, all these foundations want to help the Barnes Foundation."" " The foundation said, you know, they're there to serve public needs." "I mean, they get-- they get tax benefits." "So these places, whether it's Pew or Annenberg or anybody else, they have public responsibilities." " The responsibility should be," ""How do you keep this going? "" "Not, "How do you exploit this? "" ""How do you preserve it? "" "(dramatic music)" "They didn't say what their real goal was." "What was their real goal?" "(Music continues)" " From NPR news, this is AII Things Considered." "I'm Michele Norris." " And I'm Robert Siegel." "After two years of legal battles, one of the world's leading collections of Impressionist art is getting a new home." "Today a Pennsylvania judge ruled that the Barnes Foundation can move its collection from the suburbs to a new gallery in downtown Philadelphia." "(Music continues)" " Dr. albert Barnes made his fortune selling pharmaceuticals." "He spent it acquiring paintings by Matisse, Picasso, Renoir," "Cezanne, and other masters." "But two years ago, the foundation that oversees the art announced it was broke." "Since it's prohibited from selling any of the works hanging in its Lower Merion gallery, it asked for a court's permission to move the art to a new gallery in Philadelphia, where it could draw more visitors" "and raise more money." "Rebecca Rimel is CEO of the Pew Charitable Trusts, one of three philanthropies that are offering to raise $100 million for a new gallery and $50 million to replenish the foundation's depleted endowment." " The judge felt, and of course we have felt since the beginning, that this is not only honoring the donor's intent, but making sure that the collection will be available for generations to come." " Barnes officials were giddy today but admitted there was much work to be done before the paintings leave Lower Merion for good." "(birds chirping)" " The foundation became fiscally impossible to sustain in its current location." "I think it was three or four executive directors came in and tried to make the Barnes financially sustainable in Lower Merion." "They failed." " There were very strict limits on the number of people who could visit." "The community was very hard on being sure those limits were adhered to." " You've got this magnificent collection being hidden away from the world." "Down in Philadelphia, ten times more people a day can be able to see it." "And then it's too small." "It's too small." "The building is too small." " There is such an emphasis on preserving the artistic ensemble method that Barnes seemed to favor of hanging and arranging his paintings." "So I think people will then have the kind of experience that he intended." " And then you have the secondary benefit of what this would do to continue Philadelphia's drive to be a great tourism and destination city." "(alarm clock rings)" " # There's so much to do, so much to see #" "# There's nowhere that I'd rather be than Philly # # 'cause Philly's more fun. #" " If you were to add the Barnes to the Parkway, there isn't a couple in the United States or in Europe or Asia who's interested in arts and culture who wouldn't come to Philadelphia for at least a long weekend." " Visitors here spend over $17 million a day." "So if you have more visitors, and my understanding is that, even looking at it conservatively, the Barnes located on the Parkway would be able to accommodate four times as many visitors per year." "So you can start doing the math." " This collection should be shown to as many people as humanly possible in the best, easiest-to-get-to setting that we can do." "This was always a no-brainer for me." "It wasn't a tough decision at all." " Book our two-night package any day of the week and see why Philly's more fun when you sleep over." " These, I would say, are the key players involved, the key political backers and financial backers of the move:" "primarily, the Pew Charitable Trusts and its director, Rebecca Rimel, in consortium with, or, as I like to put it, as part of a cabal, with the Lenfest Foundation-- that's Gerry Lenfest," "who has a powerful conflict of interest as the chairman of the trustees of the Philadelphia Museum of Art-- and supported by Governor Rendell and Mayor Street and Leonore Annenberg, the widow of the late Walter Annenberg, who spent much of the last part of his life" "trying to gain possession of the Barnes." "I'm sure many among them believe sincerely that what they're doing will be for the good of Philadelphia." " We're going to build a world-class center for the fabulous Barnes collection, which has no peer anywhere else on Earth." "And I'm delighted to be here today with the mayor to make sure this is done in the appropriate way with intelligence, with reason, and compassion." "(applause)" " My feeling about Philadelphia is that it doesn't do itself justice, saying we need to be a world-class city by stealing an art collection and bringing it down to what I call a "McBarnes" in downtown Philadelphia." " This is gonna be a great event for the city of Philadelphia." "It will-- it will attract literally tens of thousands of visitors, I'm told, in a given year." "The Barnes collection on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway would have the economic impact of three Super Bowls without the beer." " A city that has any sense of its own identity doesn't talk about becoming a world-class city." "It is what it is." "This is the world class of, you know, of cheerleading, of pep rallies and of building a new baseball stadium or a convention center." "That's not what art is about." " I see the people who are attempting to move the Barnes Foundation as vandals." "Tourism and, you know, generation of money, greed." "And the Barnes Foundation is an unfortunate victim of all this bullshit." " We're at 20th and the Parkway, where they intend to build the new Barnes Foundation, and they're having some kind of party here, thinking that they're going to go ahead with this plan." "So we're here to confront the people who are paying for this thing, so we just wanted them to know that it's a bad idea." " Attention, everyone." "Attention." "Welcome, welcome, welcome to the predator's ball." "Everyone you see around me and behind me are participating in a criminal conspiracy to bring off the greatest theft of art since the Second World War." "What you are witnessing here," "ladies and gentlemen, is a theft in broad daylight." " Here's the governor." "(clamoring and chanting)" " You're not a dictator, and you're not in Philadelphia anymore!" "(chanting and clamoring)" " Dishonorable!" "Edward G. Rendell." "(background conversation)" " We're in an economic crisis." " The world is laughing at us." "Break the trust for no reason." " Please don't break the trust." " Excuse me, excuse me." " No integrity." " Shame on you!" "(clamoring)" "Shame on you!" "Shame on you!" " We're outside the location where they're planning to put the new Barnes museum." "And they're having some sort of a celebration of that, which is very annoying." "Philistines!" "And we're just sort of protesting their party because a lot of these people don't even realize what they're doing:" "destroying a man's will, destroying this collection, which half of 'em don't even have a clue about." "Have fun now!" "Wait till it's your will!" "Barnes was married, never had children, never had anyone that could have come in after the fact and said," ""Hey, you know, you screwed my grandfather over." "I want the paintings."" "The grandchildren were the students who showed up 50 years later." " To anyone who's familiar with Dr. Barnes's will, everything that he said during his lifetime, this will be destructive to his creation." "I implore you to vote no." " The motion passes." "Thank you very much." " Right now the Friends of the Barnes is an organization with one reason to exist:" "to prevent the relocation of the gallery art collection." " It's such a great all-American story." "It's almost a Barnesian story, you know." "The heroic little guy fighting the forces of City Hall and the downtown oligarchy." "That's what Barnes was doing." " You get a choice here." "You get a choice to decide to listen to the folks who live near the Barnes Foundation, the people who have been to school at the Barnes Foundation." " We're gonna be happy to have it, but thanks for trying." " Friends of the Barnes approached the county and said," ""We're struggling here." ""We'd really like you to come out and be part of this fight to save the Barnes in Montgomery County,"" "And I think it was that point that the momentum began to build, and that the residents of Montgomery County had a feeling that, "Wait a second," "Philadelphia can't just take our art."" " So would the Barnes Foundation, one of the world's greatest art collections, move from the suburbs to the city of Philadelphia?" " As Fox 29's Gerald Kolpan explains, while it appears the legal hurdles have been cleared, some say, "Not so fast. "" " Montgomery County and the local group friends of the Barnes have retained counsel, saying that if the Barnes board could raise the money for the move, they should have been able to raise the same money to improve the Barnes where it is." "There are still unknowns in this case." "No one knows just how much it'II cost taxpayers, and no one knows how hard Montgomery County is willing to fight." " I don't have any respect for the cultural and political elite of Pennsylvania." "You know, these are grade-B players who basically are doing tourism promotion." "This is the Disneyland of paintings." "That's not what Dr. Barnes wanted." "My primary goal is to reopen these proceedings by filing a petition and persuading this judge that there were things that he didn't know about, that if he had known about them, that the outcome would have been different." "What happened is, this became a feeding trough for politicians." " The story is that the Barnes has to move in order to be saved." "It's not true." " People wanted it to happen, and they assessed the situation." "They saw what needed to be done to make it happen, and they're powerful enough to do it." " I'm convinced Judge Ott is a wonderful judge and he's gonna do the right thing, and when he takes a look at this, he's gonna find that, yes, we can survive in Montgomery County" "and that's where the gallery belongs." " The move is not a done deal." "As far as I'm concerned, this a deal coming undone." " It was a combination of the establishment forces." "And I think they focused on it" "like Ahab focused on the white whale." "And I think the objective took over, and I don't think that anybody there thinks about Barnes or alternatives or consequences." "I think that this is the glory they wish to capture." " The reason it was permitted to move to Philadelphia was because the presentation by the foundation showed that it was financially not feasible to stay in Montgomery County and to survive." " It was going down the tubes, and there was no soluble answer to its problems." " If anybody can't fund the Barnes, which is a tiny little budget, out of the private sector, then they ought to find another job." "(birds chirping)" " You can't get enough people in because of the restrictions and the parking problems." "They couldn't get enough people into the Barnes to see it to make it even close to financially workable." " The truth is, that's not the way it is anymore." "Lower Merion Township, on its own, did go ahead, and they changed the zoning restrictions." "The township was able to say to the gallery," ""You're allowed to admit more persons per day and open the gallery more days per week."" "So there is real potential here to bring in more revenue." "There was no movement whatsoever from the foundation." "So they didn't allow themselves to take in more visitors and to gain more revenue." "And the supposition is that the trustees liked it that way, because they didn't want people to feel the ease of accessing the Barnes Foundation, that they wanted people to say, "Get it out of there," "bring it to Philadelphia, where we can get into it."" "There are a lot of ways this gallery can remain in Montgomery County." "There was a deal offered to the foundation." "We estimated $50 million." "The county would float a bond for $50 million, which enables the foundation to have an endowment, an ongoing endowment that would allow it to remain in Montgomery County." " You know, in six weeks, the Barnes Foundation could have $50 million in the bank and, you know, they could-- they could be fine." " This was all opened up to the foundation for purposes of negotiation." "There's a way we can make this work." "We had a response back from the foundation outright saying," ""We're not interested in this."" "There's got to be a reason that they're not interested in responding to that." " They never wanted to raise money." "They wanted this place to go bust." "They wanted it to go bust so that they would have a reason to bring people in, to dissolve the indenture, because they could then argue that they couldn't operate on the basis of the indenture, and then that would give" "they could do it with impunity and then get autonomy to operate the way they wanted." " So anybody that tells me there wasn't the money to keep it where it is... is nonsensical." "The forces wanted it moved no matter what." "(dramatic music)" "(Music continues)" " It's fair to say that there was a vast conspiracy to move the Barnes." "This obviously involved the three lead foundations, the politicians, mayors, governors, state senators." "Everybody on that side of the equation was powerful, and they had something to gain." "I think the real question, as I've always said is," ""When did the planning for this takeover first begin, and who was the lead figure? "" "That's the story that no one's really told." "(music slows, reverses)" "(Music continues)" " In 1995, after sending the collection on tour, the paintings came back to Merion." "There was a gala dinner to celebrate this at which a local billionaire, Ray Perelman, had a little idea." " A man by the name of Ray Perelman, who was then, I think, chairman of the board of the art museum, came to see me probably in the middle of my eight years as mayor and suggested that I get active in trying" "to convince the state to move the Barnes for..." "The art museum wanted to, obviously, to run it, the benefits to the city of Philadelphia, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera." "So that was probably '95, '94, '96, in that area." " My only personal contact with Ray Perelman was to have him scream at me over the phone while at the same time taking credit for the decision to move the Barnes to downtown Philadelphia." "Ray Perelman is a nasty old man." "Spell my name right and make sure he knows that I'm the one who said that." "Barnes did something that they will never be able to do." "Ray Perelman does not have an eye for art." "He never will." "And I can understand he feels bad about that." "He can't do much about it besides take it out of the hands of the Barnes Foundation." "Part of what Perelman was taking credit for was convincing anyone with any power in Philadelphia to either side with him or not to oppose him." "Is that a conspiracy?" "I don't know." "One man's conspiracy is another man's political consensus." " Why wouldn't the great foundations of Philadelphia want to save the Barnes Foundation exactly where it is?" "I mean, they are Philadelphia institutions." "They should want to preserve a Philadelphia institution as a really original institution." "Why wouldn't they want to do that?" " One of the nation's largest private foundations is now a charity." "The Pew Charitable Trusts control $4 billion in assets." "The change in status will save Pew millions of dollars in taxes and it will have fewer restrictions on how it can spend its money..." " One of the other things we didn't know was that Pew was in the process of converting itself for tax reasons from a private charity into a public charity." " One thing that a public charity has to do is demonstrate that it has the capacity to raise money, very large sums of money." " Pew also cited another potential tourist draw:" "a new building for the Barnes Foundation in downtown Philadelphia." "Pew's CEO, Rebecca Rimel, says the new charity could not only raise money for the move, but administer those funds at no cost to the project." " The Barnes was one example of what we could do as a public charity that we can't do as a private foundation." " Coincidentally, Pew stepped forward and said," ""We would be happy to be the lead foundation" ""to assemble the funds to facilitate the move of the Barnes Foundation."" " Our application to become a public charity had absolutely nothing to do with the Barnes." " You know, in court, Rebecca Rimel said," ""Oh, you know, the Barnes Foundation, that's nice, but that's not why we did it."" "Well, you go look at their application to the irs, that's all they talk about is the Barnes Foundation." " In its filings with the irs and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, it specifically alludes to being the leading force behind moving the Barnes art into Philadelphia." " Look, charity is big business." "If you're really in it for altruism, you're gonna be a pink lady in a hospital." "You're going to be, you know, going out feeding the poor from your church's outreach group." "These people are power brokers." "Don't for one minute think that if Rebecca Rimel finds that," ""Well, I now have $400 million a year to give away" ""and manipulate various things in the state or in the city," ""with what clout I have, boy, can you imagine" ""how much clout I'll have" ""with a billion a year to give away instead of only 400 million? "" " And, I might add, it was in the filings that for the first time we discovered that Pew had now estimated that the value of the Barnes art was not, as Glanton had thought, $41/2 billion," "or I had thought, $61/2 billion." "But according to the Pew, it was 25 to $30 billion worth of art." "The three foundations never said that they would give $150 million." "They said they would raise $150 million." "Even if they gave $150 million, it's the greatest bargain maybe in the history of the art world, to get $25 billion worth of irreplaceable post-lmpressionist masterpieces for what, for them, is a drop in the bucket." " On a Friday in October of 2006, I got an email... from someone within the Friends of the Barnes saying that squirreled away in the 2001-2002 budget of the state of Pennsylvania was $107 million:" "$7 million for upgrades of the Merion property," "$100 million for the move downtown." "(somber music)" " It's amazing to me that in the case" "I called the appropriation "the immaculate appropriation,"" "because it had no father or mother." "Nobody knows who asked to put the money in." "So maybe it was divine inspiration." "We don't know." " The budget bill is a very thick piece of legislation, and 99% of the other members of the General Assembly, I'm sure, didn't know when they voted on that capital budget bill that particular project was in there." " It was never publicized, the judge didn't know, but the people who were trying to take over the foundation, within that group of people..." "It's-- it would be unbelievable that nobody knew." "The rescue operation said, "We will raise $100 million" ""to build a new building in downtown Philadelphia for the Barnes Foundation."" "The state budget allocated $100 million to build a new building for the Barnes Foundation in downtown Philadelphia." "What a coincidence, a shocking coincidence." " All the big-money people connected with this project, you can't tell me that nobody knew" "$100 million was in the budget." "Some senator didn't wake up and decide," ""I'm just gonna do this."" "Somebody with influence got that put in there." "Whoever that person was-- or people or institution-- never let on in court that that money was available." "Here you come to court, and you say, "We're broke." ""There's no other way we can raise the money." "We got to move this collection."" "Had the judge known that, oh, the state could put up $100 million, it would have been a whole nother story." " Rebecca Rimel professes," ""We didn't have anything to do with it," okay?" "But all these people that would be the beneficiaries" "I mean, you have to understand," "The Pew Trusts, at the same time that this is going on, filed for public charity status." "But in order to show that you're a public charity, you have to be getting money from the public." " The Pew Charitable Trust at the time was worth $4 billion." "Who in their right mind is gonna give money to a $4 billion foundation?" " Apparently, for some reason," "Governor Rendell has taken the position that this is an important project for the city of Philadelphia and has allocated $25 million of taxpayer money out of that $100 million authorization for the project." " One of the neat things if you're a public charity is, you can administer money from all sorts of places, including the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania." "Pew gets credit for that as, "We raised public money."" "That counts towards their tax status." "I'm not quite so naive as to believe that no one knew about $107 million." "Maybe it was a typo." "I don't know." "But she didn't know anything about this." " People involved in the takeover of the Barnes Foundation knew that it was there and kept that information from the court." " Is that a linchpin?" "Yeah." "It's like, what are the surrounding circumstances that should have been brought to the attention of this judge?" "If I had been a judge, which probably no one would like," "I would have, if I had learned about this, I'd say," ""You know what?" ""These proceedings are recessed." ""The parties should go figure out how to get a piece of that money to keep it right here."" " If I was Judge Ott, I'd be furious." "I'd be looking for a way to turn this thing around." "Because he got taken for a ride." "I don't know many judges that like to get duped in their courtrooms." "I don't know many judges that like to be made fools of." "Judge Ott was made a fool of by these people." "(birds chirping)" " So you see all these interlocking relationships, and if I were a conspiratorial figure," "I'd think an enormous conspiracy is at work here, of moneyed interests to have their will, to have their way, to manipulate the treasury of the State of Pennsylvania, to manipulate the legal system of Pennsylvania," "to manipulate Dr. Barnes' desires and wishes, to manipulate Lincoln University, to play on this needy little college so desperate for money and know that $50 million would blind their eyes to what was really in their grasp." " I just think they wanted to capture the prize, and the whole establishment mobilized to that end." "They don't like to have the whole thing questioned." "I think they're used to getting their way, and this is the way, and if you question it, you're standing in the way." " If any major figure within the Philadelphia art world wanted to speak against this idea, they could kiss the Pew Charitable Trust good-bye." "They could kiss the Lenfest Foundation good-bye." "They could kiss the Annenberg Foundation good-bye." "Perhaps they could kiss their own job good-bye." "No one could speak." " Yeah, but the news is in here, right?" " Sir, that's all I'm asking." " I'm asking-- I'm just asking a question." " And I'm telling you an answer." " You're not giving me an answer." "Are news crews allowed in or no?" " If the news are allowed in, though, and we are part of the press, then we should be allowed inside with the rest of the press." " No, no, those press are invited; you are not." " Right, they're invited guests." " So even though the mayor's office said it was open to the press and that we could come..." " You're not invited." "Please step out of..." "Please step out." " People in museums in New York, in San Francisco, in Chicago and Dallas and other places didn't say a goddamn word while all this was going on." "I think they were scared." "They were frightened of these foundations who are benevolent and give great sums of money to all kinds of causes." "Some of them have supported the NAACP." "And I've often wondered if I'm not endangering my organization by complaining about their bad behavior in this case." " You know, I'm afraid." "I realize I'm putting some part of my life and my livelihood at risk by doing this." "I don't know how they would come after me, but if they wanted to, you know, they can make anybody's life difficult that they want to." " The forces that, in effect, are keeping the Barnes hostage are almost overwhelming." "You could ask the simple question," ""Who speaks for the art or the legacy of Dr. Barnes" ""when so many powerful political and economic forces are at work against it? "" " (clears throat)" "(ignition starts)" "(soft piano music)" "(Music continues)" " Yeah, it's a big day." "Today's oral arguments, which means what-- what both sides have already said to the judge in writing they're gonna repeat, you know, in front of him." "And he'll decide whether to grant our petition and convene some hearings to decide whether the Barnes Foundation should still be permitted to move downtown, or he'll pretty much, in essence, throw us out of court, and that will be bad news." "(Music continues)" " It's all in Stanley Ott's hands." "If Stanley wants to undo it, he can undo it." "He can say that he was given a lot of baloney the first time through and the record can now be set straight and it deserves to be set straight." "And I think he's a good enough judge to make that decision." " We have an obligation to do what Dr. Barnes wanted us to do, and I think that's the essence of this whole thing, that not enough was done to fully explore what can be done to keep the Barnes where it is." "Some people, like the Friends of the Barnes, aren't gonna let that happen, and hopefully, they'll be successful." " Unfortunately, the thing has gotten to be a big political football, and it never should have gotten there." " In that sense, Richard Glanton was absolutely right." "Glanton said, when I asked him what it's all about, he said," ""It's about who controls $41/2 billion worth of art, and everything else is bullshit."" "Well, no, Richard was wrong." "It's about who controls $25 billion worth of art, and everything else is bullshit." "(Music continues)" "(birds chirping)" "(traffic whooshes)" " Well, Wednesday night, I got home and there was an email on my computer, the subject heading that Judge Ott had issued his decision." "He apparently has decided that he's not going to conduct-- he's not going to investigate any of the... any of the matters that our petition brought to the court's attention." "He had declined to order new hearings by declaring that none of the petitioners, that is, the Friends of the Barnes Foundation and Montgomery County, had standing to intervene in the matter." "(drill whirs)" "(siren blares)" "I don't think that the judge or the trustees of the Barnes Foundation or anybody who's supporting the move, who sincerely supports the move of the gallery art to downtown, that they understand what it is that they're doing." "It'll be a tragedy, and it'll be a tragedy long remembered." "This is not some minor thing." "It's not often in life you get to really try hard for something you deeply believe in, and I've gotten a chance to do that." "I would've much rather be celebrating this than... whatever the opposite of celebrating is-- mourning." "(Music continues)" " So the city gets its tourist venue." "The governor does too." "The governor makes his friends at Pew happy." "Pew gets to control the art." "Gerry Lenfest of the Lenfest Foundation is chairman of the museum." "The museum finally, in effect, gets the art." "It's virtually an appendage." "And Annenberg people get Walter and Leonore's dream." "And if it's not the destruction of the Barnes Foundation, what is it?" " Sort of expect that there will be an Annenberg and a Lenfest and a Pew wing of this new Barnes building." "And at some point Barnes will somehow be, like I said..." "You get-- you can probably get a sweatshirt or something with his name on it, but that'll be about it." " Maybe that's a way of having Philadelphia come back to the forefront and be one of the leading cities." "It'll be the leader in showing people how to break trusts and how to break-- how to break trusts with the public." "You know, maybe that's a good, new role for Philadelphia." "They can have, you know-- ring a special Liberty Bell for it." " And I think not only will Barnes be violated by having it moved, he'll be violated in the experience he wanted you to have, and that's important, because it was his art;" "it belonged to him." "He had the right to do with it as he chose." "And these people, these vandals, stepped in and took it away from him." " These are not people who are concerned about the art." "These are people who are concerned about money and power." "And who would destroy what is... a perfect jewel box... and also a kind of a living piece of history?" "You know, to walk into the Barnes is to see the art as Barnes, for all of his greatness and all of his foibles, had it," "And it is, in its way..." "perfection." "(dramatic music)" "Matisse said it was the only sane place to see art in America." "I'll wager Matisse against Bernie Watson and Rebecca Rimel any day, and I bet Dr. Barnes would too." "I think he might say, "Let Matisse speak for me."" "(pensive music)" "(Music continues)"