Getty Trust: Buy the Barnes

To: Barry Munitz, president and CEO, J. Paul Getty Trust

From: Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times art critic

Re: The Barnes Foundation

I know it's unusual to be writing you this letter, but a bad cultural situation lately has gotten worse. Now, a disastrous crisis looms. Maybe you can help.

No doubt you are aware of the seemingly intractable woes that lately have befallen the Barnes Foundation, the unique shrine to American pragmatist philosophy in a wealthy suburb 10 miles outside Philadelphia. The school was created around arguably the finest collection of Modern art ever assembled by one individual in our nation's history. The several hundred paintings by Cezanne, Van Gogh, Seurat, Matisse and Renoir are its most famous assets, but there also are fine European Old Masters, African sculptures, Pennsylvania Dutch furniture, pre-Columbian objects and more.

Awhile back, after years of mismanagement, the prospect of bankruptcy loomed. The Getty generously pitched in $500,000 (and some management expertise) to help keep the Barnes afloat -- and to buy some time. Maybe locals would figure out a way to save the place. Pennsylvania is a rich state, and in the decades after the country's founding, Philadelphia even was the art capital of the United States.

Well, it didn't happen. Management was indeed professionalized, but money was not forthcoming. Instead, vultures began to circle the wounded prey.

So here's why I'm writing. I have a rescue plan to propose. One that would ensure that an irreplaceable national treasure would remain intact. The Getty should buy the Barnes Foundation and maintain it as it is.

Without such a rescue, its days are numbered. Over the last year or so a coalition of local businessmen, politicians and wealthy charities has launched a scheme to dismantle the Barnes Foundation.

In hopes of aiding Philadelphia's ailing economy, they want to turn the suburban school into an art museum, to be built in a downtown tourist district after a flashy international competition for an architect. (Yes, the Bilbao Effect.) They know that the general public loves the Impressionists, Picasso and Matisse and that the art is worth billions. So their plan is to remove the staggering collection from the suburban school where the late collector, Dr. Albert C. Barnes, and his trenchant educational advisor, the premier American philosopher John Dewey, carefully installed it early in the 20th century.