The Barnes Morphs Into a Museum

When we weren't looking, the Barnes Foundation became a museum. How do I know? The website of the Association of Art Museum Directors told me so. As of June, the Barnes has been an AAMD member.

This is one more example of how the current Barnes board and administration are deviating from the wishes of founder Albert Barnes, who was adamant that his foundation was an educational institution, not a museum. Chartered in 1922 by the State of Pennsylvania as and educational institution, it still teaches Barnes' theories about art, in classes owing some of their methodology to the educational philosophy of his friend, John Dewey.

Prior Barnes administrators had always emphasized that their institution was NOT a museum, so I was scrupulously careful never to use the "M" word in my 2004 NY Times Op-Ed piece about plans to move the Barnes to Philadelphia. Imagine my surprise and chagrin when I read the editor's headline: "Destroying the Museum to Save It." (This is why editors should always pass headlines and captions by their writers. They don't.)

But back to the Barnes: Why this sudden desire for museum status? I asked the foundation's press spokesperson, Andrew Stewart, in an e-mail sent Monday evening, but have yet to get a reply.

So let me guess: The expanded and repurposed institution, which, if all goes according to plan, will eventually migrate to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, will be much more museum-like than school-like in its activities, programs and visitor experience. Redefining itself as a museum might also open up possibilities for a wider range of grants and other philanthropy.

What's more, now that the move is facing yet another legal challenge, the Barnes doesn't want anyone arguing (as I did in my Op-Ed essay) that because it's not a museum, it is not bound by the AAMD's strictures against selling objects from the collection for purposes other than buying other objects. If it sold some holdings, the Barnes could use the proceeds to help make it financially possible to survive and thrive in Merion.

Those of you who know my customarily rigid stance against deaccessioning must be doing a double-take. But the Barnes is not a collecting institution, and it owns many objects, never displayed, that easily fall within the AAMD's criteria for deaccessioning: inferior pieces that are not of museum quality (but might be of interest to collectors, thanks to the Barnes provenance). Albert Barnes' written strictures against selling his foundation's holdings applied only to works on view in the galleries, not the 5,200 objects and documents in the "ancillary collections."

But once it's in AAMD, the Barnes is ethically bound by AAMD's rules, even if those rules are ill-suited to an institution that was intended to be primarily a school, has no use for many of the stored objects in furthering its educational mission, and that cannot use the proceeds from deaccessions to buy other works, for the simple reason that it does not acquire.

Under the current circumstances, the prohibition against sales could be regarded by the Philly Barnes proponents as a convenient and welcome restriction.

Incidentally, the date by which the Barnes must file its response in Montgomery County Orphans' Court to petitions opposing its planned move was postponed to this Friday. I'm assuming that its lawyers will argue that the case has already been definitively decided and that the petitioners should not be granted legal standing to request reconsideration by Judge Stanley Ott. It might still be up to the judge, however, to decide whether changed circumstances warrant his taking another look.

Time and the lawyers will tell.