The Art of the Steal
Apr. 4th, 2012 12:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficTitle: The Art of the Steal
Genre: Documentary
In between doing all the chores I didn't get a chance to do last weekend, I watched The Art of the Steal, a documentary that Netflix told me was about art theft and the fate of the Barnes collection. I was picturing White Collar meets Catch Me If You Can. Ha ha, no. That was not it at all.
In a nutshell, a self-made millionaire who hated the cultural elite of Philadelphia amassed the single greatest collection of post-Impressionistic art in the world in a small suburb of Philly. (From wiki, it includes 181 paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 69 by Paul Cézanne, 59 by Henri Matisse, 46 by Pablo Picasso, 21 by Chaim Soutine, 18 by Henri Rousseau, 16 by Amedeo Modigliani, 11 by Edgar Degas, 7 by Vincent Van Gogh, and 6 by Georges Seurat. The collection is estimated to be worth $25-30 billion.) So--one of the greatest art collections in the world.
When Barnes was alive, he built a school around his collection with the purpose of allowing true art lovers to really experience it. And by this he meant he really enjoyed locking the doors to all the rich people who came down to see it. If you were a plumber, come on in. If you had a chauffeur? You could fuck right off. He also had a talent, you could guess, of mightily pissing off powerful people.
When he died in 1951, he made a trust, the Barnes Foundation, that was to display the art exactly where it was--never sell it, never move it, never loan it out--and keep the institution as a school only occasionally open to the public.
The documentary is, I think, about the futility of trying to create something that will last forever. Because when the last trustee who had worked with Barnes died, an epic battle started over the fate of the collection. Basically, there was a corporate takeover by one non-profit organization of another. The Pew Charitable Trust, backed by a lot of politicians, mugged the Barnes Foundation and moved the collection to Philadelphia. (The new Barnes building is, in fact, opening its doors this Memorial Day.)
The doc was from the perspective of people who were against the takeover and move, as it explicitly violated Barnes's trust and his wishes regarding his art.
I have to say, though, a lot of these anti-move people are hypocritical assholes.
For example, the neighbors of the Barnes Foundation. When the board of trustees was taken over by Lincoln University (as stipulated in the trust), a small, poor, black university, that new board tried to bring the Barnes to prominence and tackle the serious conservation issues. This meant suddenly busloads of people were coming to see the Barnes. The neighbors were PISSED. Like, filming the busloads of people, getting into a fight on the town council, and then an extremely stupid and complicated legal battle with Lincoln University. One of the neighbors says, emphatically, "They were running a commercial museum in a residential neighborhood."
He's right. They were. The neighborhood was not logistically capable of handling the number of people who wanted to see one of the greatest art collections in the world.
But as soon as there was talk of moving it, THIS SAME NEIGHBOR is all about they can't just rob us of our culture!
I see this as exactly in the spirit of Barnes. We want to keep this art cause we like having it here, but we don't want anyone coming to see it or anything cause it's disruptive. So just the kind of power games Barnes seemed to enjoy.
Even though the doc was anti-move, anti using this collection to generate money, prestige, etc., I end up being for it. There's a point where art like that is a public artifact. I think it should be moved to where people can actually see it. Never mind the fact that Barnes was so anti-museum, anti-arbitors of culture, yet his collection only has any importance because those exact people decided it did.
Many people in the doc bemoan art being treated as big business. And you know why it's big business? Cause a lot of people care a lot about having access to it. Barnes, and many of those interviewed, seemed to have this idea that only the "elite" (they're defining it in populist terms, but they still have in mind an idea of a proper art viewer) deserve to see art, because only these elite can properly appreciate it. And of course they see themselves as the elite, and all those annoying tourists as undeserving. I say fuck that.
It's a very interesting look at the maneuverings of charities, and one man's failed attempt to try to extend his control beyond his own lifetime. There are also lots of racial undercurrents, with an underfunded black university gaining control of one of the most coveted and valuable cultural possessions in the world. (Spoiler: They don't keep control very long.) And I hadn't heard anything about any of this, though I bet you Philly people have.
Now, who wants to go see the new Barnes?
Genre: Documentary
In between doing all the chores I didn't get a chance to do last weekend, I watched The Art of the Steal, a documentary that Netflix told me was about art theft and the fate of the Barnes collection. I was picturing White Collar meets Catch Me If You Can. Ha ha, no. That was not it at all.
In a nutshell, a self-made millionaire who hated the cultural elite of Philadelphia amassed the single greatest collection of post-Impressionistic art in the world in a small suburb of Philly. (From wiki, it includes 181 paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 69 by Paul Cézanne, 59 by Henri Matisse, 46 by Pablo Picasso, 21 by Chaim Soutine, 18 by Henri Rousseau, 16 by Amedeo Modigliani, 11 by Edgar Degas, 7 by Vincent Van Gogh, and 6 by Georges Seurat. The collection is estimated to be worth $25-30 billion.) So--one of the greatest art collections in the world.
When Barnes was alive, he built a school around his collection with the purpose of allowing true art lovers to really experience it. And by this he meant he really enjoyed locking the doors to all the rich people who came down to see it. If you were a plumber, come on in. If you had a chauffeur? You could fuck right off. He also had a talent, you could guess, of mightily pissing off powerful people.
When he died in 1951, he made a trust, the Barnes Foundation, that was to display the art exactly where it was--never sell it, never move it, never loan it out--and keep the institution as a school only occasionally open to the public.
The documentary is, I think, about the futility of trying to create something that will last forever. Because when the last trustee who had worked with Barnes died, an epic battle started over the fate of the collection. Basically, there was a corporate takeover by one non-profit organization of another. The Pew Charitable Trust, backed by a lot of politicians, mugged the Barnes Foundation and moved the collection to Philadelphia. (The new Barnes building is, in fact, opening its doors this Memorial Day.)
The doc was from the perspective of people who were against the takeover and move, as it explicitly violated Barnes's trust and his wishes regarding his art.
I have to say, though, a lot of these anti-move people are hypocritical assholes.
For example, the neighbors of the Barnes Foundation. When the board of trustees was taken over by Lincoln University (as stipulated in the trust), a small, poor, black university, that new board tried to bring the Barnes to prominence and tackle the serious conservation issues. This meant suddenly busloads of people were coming to see the Barnes. The neighbors were PISSED. Like, filming the busloads of people, getting into a fight on the town council, and then an extremely stupid and complicated legal battle with Lincoln University. One of the neighbors says, emphatically, "They were running a commercial museum in a residential neighborhood."
He's right. They were. The neighborhood was not logistically capable of handling the number of people who wanted to see one of the greatest art collections in the world.
But as soon as there was talk of moving it, THIS SAME NEIGHBOR is all about they can't just rob us of our culture!
I see this as exactly in the spirit of Barnes. We want to keep this art cause we like having it here, but we don't want anyone coming to see it or anything cause it's disruptive. So just the kind of power games Barnes seemed to enjoy.
Even though the doc was anti-move, anti using this collection to generate money, prestige, etc., I end up being for it. There's a point where art like that is a public artifact. I think it should be moved to where people can actually see it. Never mind the fact that Barnes was so anti-museum, anti-arbitors of culture, yet his collection only has any importance because those exact people decided it did.
Many people in the doc bemoan art being treated as big business. And you know why it's big business? Cause a lot of people care a lot about having access to it. Barnes, and many of those interviewed, seemed to have this idea that only the "elite" (they're defining it in populist terms, but they still have in mind an idea of a proper art viewer) deserve to see art, because only these elite can properly appreciate it. And of course they see themselves as the elite, and all those annoying tourists as undeserving. I say fuck that.
It's a very interesting look at the maneuverings of charities, and one man's failed attempt to try to extend his control beyond his own lifetime. There are also lots of racial undercurrents, with an underfunded black university gaining control of one of the most coveted and valuable cultural possessions in the world. (Spoiler: They don't keep control very long.) And I hadn't heard anything about any of this, though I bet you Philly people have.
Now, who wants to go see the new Barnes?
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no subject
Date: 2012-04-04 09:46 pm (UTC)The real problem is that museums in this country aren't free. Period. Most other civilized countries in the world have their works of art in museums that are sufficiently funded by taxpayer dollars such that individual patrons don't have to pay. Now, you could argue that it could be free to see most museums in NYC or other major cities, being as the door price is only "suggested," but given the dirty fucking looks and spiteful tones that have been used on me when I paid to enter as a student with the most modest of discounts, that counter-argument is horse shit. If you set up museums to be expensive, or free but functionally not because the staff there is trained to intimidate/guilt/bully you into paying because raising taxes is a sin, only the rich can afford to be cultured. I'd love to hear what Barnes' enemies would have thought of things like "Target's Free Fridays" at museums.
Okay, enough ranting and abusing quotation marks.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-05 02:27 am (UTC)Having grown up near Philly--the Barnes foundation issues had nothing to do with entrance fees. They had one of the best collections in the world, which they only deigned to show on erratic days in a falling down building without good conservation that is inaccessible by public transportation and has no parking lot. And were outraged that people would want to move it somewhere where it could be protected and safely viewed. He was an asshole, most of the foundation were assholes, and while I'm sorry a small African American museum got shafted (which they did, the Annenbergs are also assholes), I'm not sorry the museum got moved. I lived in that area for 15 years, and it was one of the few museums I've never been to, because getting in was basically impossible. And it had nothing to do with the entrance fees.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-05 03:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-05 11:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-05 06:24 pm (UTC)