December 21, 2004

The City of Philadelphia’s grand cultural thoroughfare—the mile-long, downtown Benjamin Franklin Parkway—is now poised to become a globally significant concentration of cultural treasures.

On December 13, a suburban Philadelphia orphans court judge ruled in favor of the Barnes Foundation’s two-year effort to change its charter (not, as other sources are reporting, founder Dr. Albert Barnes’s will) and relocate its cash-strapped institution from its 79-year, Paul Cret-designed home in Philadelphia’s Main Line of Merion to a new facility on the Parkway.

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This relocation most prominently involves the move of the institution’s multibillion-dollar collection of Impressionist and Post-impressionist paintings and art works—181 Reniors, 69 Cezannes, and 60 Matisses, among numerous Picassos, Van Goghs, Monets, and many others. (50% of this collection has not been publicly viewed in more than 50 years.) The move is backed by support from 30 donors—primarily, the Philadelphia-based Annenberg Foundation, Lenfest Foundation, and Pew Charitable Trusts—totaling an estimated $150 million.

Museum officials say the move will help the Barnes better realize the purpose Dr. Barnes envisioned: to advance education through art appreciation, to provide nondiscriminatory access to art and education. (Merion officials, among other restrictions, limit the Barnes’s annual attendance figures to 62,000.) Barnes Executive Director Kimberly Camp says the Barnes is committed to “democracy in education”—a program reflecting the ideas of the institution’s first education director, John Dewey. Many residents and officials see the move as an opportunity to not only provide increased access to the art, but also to realize the Parkway’s untapped potential as a major urban boulevard.

Opponents to the move included a team of three Barnes students and their lawyer, who attempted to stop the move based on what they interpreted as a violation of Dr. Barnes’s wishes. Other critics of the charter change include art writers for the Los Angeles Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer (The New York Times touted the move as a progressive step for art as public property), who argued that the ruling will negatively impact the future of donor bequests. They also accuse the city and its leadership of attempting to make the Parkway into a tourist trap.

In response to the ruling, Philadelphia Mayor John Street, on December 14t, announced that the city will raze, by December 2005, a juvenile detention center—the Parkway’s eyesore—and give the site to the Barnes. This site is flanked by Paul Cret’s Rodin Museum and the Free Library of Philadelphia, which Moshe Safdie is renovating and expanding by 100%. Other new Parkway neighbors include Richard Gluckman’s ongoing renovation and expansion of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s new operations, library, and gallery complex and Tadao Ando’s planned Calder Museum. Camp says the Barnes’s new building will maintain the layout of its present home, including the spatial relationships and the institution’s signature arrangement of artwork. An architect has not yet been selected, nor has a plan been developed.

Joseph Dennis Kelly II