Just in: The judge in Pennsylvania has ruled against the petition by the Friends of the Barnes Foundation to reopen the case against the move — and he ruled against them, as expected.
Here’s the Barnes_Opinion[1].pdf.
A spokeswoman for the Friends group says that they will appeal.
In a nutshell, Judge Stanley R. Ott of Montgomery County Orphans’ Court ruled that the Friends of the Barnes, which opposes the impending move ing of the renowned collection of Impressionist and Early Modernist works to a new museum near the Philadelphia Museum of Art, had no legal standing to challenge the move.
Ott had made a similar ruling in a 2007 suit brought by the organization, but the Friends group went back to his courtroom, arguing that new evidence contained in a 2009 movie, The Art of the Steal, showed that Pennsylvania authorities had connived to facilitate the move.
Ott disagreed, ruling that the movie contained no new information. Here’s a fuller article in the Philadelphia Inquirer.