Disarray on Both Sides of the Barnes Wars: Philly Movers and Merion Shakers UPDATED

If you're trying to take on the powers that be, you'd best present a united front.

But when attorney Mark Schwartz yesterday filed a 79-page petition in Montgomery County Orphans Court, asking Judge Stanley Ott to rescind his permission for the Barnes Foundation's board to move its collection from from Merion, PA, to Philadelphia, he did so on behalf of the Friends of the Barnes Foundation (a citizens' group), not on behalf of his former clients, the Montgomery County Commissioners, who had hired him more than two months ago.

The county and Schwartz recently parted ways because of disagreements about the wording of the petition and conflicts caused by Schwartz's divided loyalties in also representing the Friends group, which wanted language that the county government did not endorse.

"He wouldn't do what we wanted," said Montgomery County Deputy Solicitor Carolyn Carluccio, who added that she would soon file a separate petition on behalf of the county. She told CultureGrrl yesterday that she had not yet seen the final version of Schwartz's petition, but the draft she did see was, in her view, too lengthy and "contained a lot of gratuitous attacks on people that we thought were unnecessary. I was taking them out, and he was putting them back in." She said Schwartz had declared that the Friends group wanted that wording retained, and was paying him more than the county was.

Schwartz's draft petition, she added, criticized the Attorney General's handling of the Barnes court case and the Governor's attempt, through correspondence, to influence the judge in favor of the move. Both were roundly criticized by Judge Ott himself in his decision.

But despite the possible validity and relevance of this criticism, Carluccio said that, as a government entity, Montgomery County could not endorse language that impugned other government officials. She said that her petition will focus on the recent "significant changes in circumstances" that might persuade Judge Ott to reconsider whether the Barnes could survive and thrive in the location for which founder Albert Barnes had intended it.

Schwartz's petition, according to the Friends' press release, "further requests that Judge Ott remove the present Board of Directors and place the Foundation in receivership."

A copy of the petition itself is being sent to me by snail mail. But I suspect the Philadelphia Inquirer will beat me to the full petition and the full story. (I'll update with a link.) Andrew Stewart, press spokesman for the Barnes, told me that no architect for the planned Philly facility would be chosen from the foundation's shortlist "until some time after Labor Day."

Meanwhile, the powerful pro-Philadelphia forces are still stymied over where to move the juvenile detention center that now occupies the preferred site for the new Barnes facility. A story in last Wednesday's Inquirer about violence and abuses at the center will surely intensify the NIMBY forces already in evidence in the neighborhood being eyed for the new "Youth Study Center," as it is euphemistically called.

John Sullivan of the Inquirer notes:

The new youth center is slated to go up on a five-acre site between Market Street and Haverford Avenue in West Philadelphia, but the move has been blocked for three years by Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell. She has said residents there have concerns about traffic, parking, and the potential for young inmates to escape.

What's more, architecture critic James Russell of Bloomberg last week raised serious questions about whether the Philly Barnes could reasonably be achieved within its expected timeframe (completed in 2009) and at its projected cost ($100 million).

I have a simple solution: Engage Diller Scofidio + Refro to renovate and expand the Philadelphia detention center in situ, and keep the Barnes in Merion.

UPDATE: Coverage today from the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Associated Press. Both contain quotes from yesterday's Friends press conference, but not from the petition itself.

UPDATE 2: Jim McCaffrey in The Bulletin of Philadelphia does quote from the Friends' petition [via], but I'll need to get my hands on the entire document (and, preferably, on the upcoming Montgomery County petition as well) before I can make some informed comments.

If I'm off-blog for most of today, it's because I'm on a mainstream media assignment.

August 28, 2007 12:07 AM | | Comments (0) |

Categories:

Leave a comment

About

CULTUREGRRL (Lee Rosenbaum) is the artworld's award-winning "best blog."

LEE SPEAKS on artworld issues, art blogging, journalism. To engage me, go here. To see me speak, go here.

CULTUREGRRL VIDEOS
LeeAcrop.jpg
KEEP CULTUREGRRL BLOGGING! Please Contribute. Donors of $5 or more receive immediate e-mail notifications of new posts. Donors of $50 or more get advance alerts. Secure transaction via PayPal:
________________________

CULTUREGRRL CLASSIFIEDS
(Choose ad rates on drop-down menu below; send ad copy here.)

YOUR ANNOUNCEMENT HERE!
________________________
Ad Rates
Send ad copy here
Use CultureGrrl Classifieds to announce shows, programs, lectures, courses, jobs, etc. Provide URL for link to your webpage. (Text of the link, not URL, is included towards maximum character count.) Ads begin run on Monday after submission. Click drop-down rate menu to choose ad size, duration; send ad copy here; send secure payment via PayPal by clicking "Buy Now" button, above. more

LEE ROSENBAUM
I'm a veteran cultural journalist who writes frequently for the Wall Street Journal's "Leisure & Arts" page. I'm a regular cultural contributor on New York Public Radio (WNYC). I've been profiled on the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer's Art Beat and in the Chicago Reader. I've appeared as an art-market commentator on BBC-TV and have published numerous Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. I am author of The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf) and have lectured on cultural property issues at the New Acropolis Museum and the University of Pennsylvania, on deaccessioning at Columbia Law School, the University of Iowa and a conference of the Museum Association of New York, on museum governance and cultural property issues at Seton Hall University, and on arts blogging at American University.

twitter.png
Look at me! I'm tweeting! more

Contact me

Click here to send me an email...

more

Archives

Archives: 2228 entries and counting

Me Elsewhere

Highlights from my writings and broadcasts: 


MY BOOK
The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf)

IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA
NY TIMES OP-EDS:
For Sale: Our Permanent Collection(museum deaccessions)
Fashion Victim (Chanel at the Met)
Destroying the Museum to Save It (Barnes Foundation)
Reassembling Sundered Antiquities (Parthenon marbles)

WALL STREET JOURNAL:
Landesman Produces Controversy
New Modern Wing at Art Institute of Chicago
Michael Conforti Profile
Making Sales Look Stronger
Lee Krasner's "Little Image "Paintings
Ando-Designed Stone Hill Center for Conservation and Clark Exhibitions
Los Angeles' New Broad Museum of Contemporary Art
Philadelphia's New Perelman Building
The Walton Effect: Art World Is Roiled by Wal-Mart Heiress

Tricks of the Auction Trade

The Seattle Art Museum: A Work in Progress

Upside Down and Backward, Yet Tame (Boston ICA)
Edith Wharton's Library Is Now an Open Book
Extreme Makeover: Smithsonian Edition (American Art and Portrait Gallery renovation)
This Museum's Expansion is Simply Effective (Minneapolis Institute)
Truth in Booty: Coming--and Staying--Clean (antiquities controversies)
A Betrayal of Trust (NY Public Library's art sales)
The Lost Museum (MoMA's art sales)
Endangered Species (single-collector jewel-box museums)
Money in Motion (the Guggenheim's finances)
The Fine Art of Genocide? (appraisals of Hitler's art)

LA TIMES OP-EDS:
Make Art Loans, Not War
Museums Can't Compete (public collecting endangered)

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
Her Art Came First: Anne d'Harnoncourt's Labor of Love

ART IN AMERICA:
Refreshing the Smithsonian (the renovated SAAM and NPG)
The Atrium That Ate the Morgan (Renzo Piano's addition)
Hot Pots and Potshots (controversies over museum antiquities)
Musings on Museums (book review of "Whose Muse?")

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO:
Criticism of AAM's Cultural Diplomacy Initiative

WQXR, NEW YORK CLASSICAL RADIO
Modernist Abstraction Exhibitions in NYC

NEW YORK PUBLIC RADIO:
Musical Diplomacy on "Soundcheck Smackdown"
Vermeer's "Milkmaid" at the Met
Art in the Obama White House
Museum of Arts and Design Opens
New Met Director, Brian Lehrer Show
Tom Campbell Named Met Director
Whitney Museum's Expansion
Fake Coptic Art at Brooklyn Museum
Spring '08 Art Auctions
Should Veterans or Newcomers Lead Arts Organizations?
Murakami at Brooklyn Museum
Whitney Biennial
Guggenheim Director Steps Down
Philippe de Montebello's Retirement
Fall '07 Art Auctions
Metropolitan Museum's "Age of Rembrandt" Show
Commentary on the Art Market
Tour of Sculpture Gardens, with Slideshow
Audio Commentary on the Met's New Greek and Roman Galleries
Glenn Lowry's Unorthodox Compensation Package
Commentary on Fall '07 Art Market

PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC RADIO:
Philadelphia Museum's "Gross Clinic" Deaccessions
Museums' Purchase and Sale of Eakins' Works (about one-third of the way into the program)
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' sale of Eakins' "The Cello Player"

BBC-TV:
Impressionist/Modern Auction at Sotheby's

more of me elsewhere

Blogroll

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by CultureGrrl published on August 28, 2007 12:07 AM.

Clink These Links: Lucy Meets the Press, Flames Skirt Ancient Olympia, "Pollocks" Meet the Public was the previous entry in this blog.

Memo to Alice Walton: If You Want to Buy Into Fisk's Collection, Learn How to Spell It is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

AJ Ads

AJ Blogs

AJBlogCentral | rss

culture
About Last Night
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Artful Manager
Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture
blog riley
rock culture approximately
critical difference
Laura Collins-Hughes on arts, culture and coverage
Dewey21C
Richard Kessler on arts education
diacritical
Douglas McLennan's blog
Dog Days
Dalouge Smith advocates for the Arts
Flyover
Art from the American Outback
Life's a Pitch
For immediate release: the arts are marketable
Mind the Gap
No genre is the new genre
Performance Monkey
David Jays on theatre and dance
Plain English
Paul Levy measures the Angles
Real Clear Arts
Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture
Rockwell Matters
John Rockwell on the arts
Straight Up |
Jan Herman - arts, media & culture with 'tude

dance
Foot in Mouth
Apollinaire Scherr talks about dance
Seeing Things
Tobi Tobias on dance et al...

jazz
Jazz Beyond Jazz
Howard Mandel's freelance Urban Improvisation
ListenGood
Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
Rifftides
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

media
Out There
Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology
Serious Popcorn
Martha Bayles on Film...

classical music
Creative Destruction
Fresh ideas on building arts communities
The Future of Classical Music?
Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress
On the Record
Exploring Orchestras w/ Henry Fogel
Overflow
Harvey Sachs on music, and various digressions
PianoMorphosis
Bruce Brubaker on all things Piano
PostClassic
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Sandow
Greg Sandow on the future of Classical Music
Slipped Disc
Norman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds

publishing
book/daddy
Jerome Weeks on Books
Quick Study
Scott McLemee on books, ideas & trash-culture ephemera

theatre
Drama Queen
Wendy Rosenfield: covering drama, onstage and off
lies like truth
Chloe Veltman on how culture will save the world

visual
Aesthetic Grounds
Public Art, Public Space
Another Bouncing Ball
Regina Hackett takes her Art To Go
Artopia
John Perreault's art diary
CultureGrrl
Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary
Modern Art Notes
Tyler Green's modern & contemporary art blog
Creative Commons License
This weblog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.