Conspiracy theory or hostile corporate takeover?
Those two options come to mind when reading the lengthy court petition filed recently in the dispiriting case of the Barnes Foundation. Nearly three years ago, the court approved moving the unique Pennsylvania school with the drop-dead $6-billion Modern art collection from suburban Lower Merion Township to downtown Philadelphia. The scheme wrecks the greatest American cultural monument of the early 20th century, so opponents are trying a last-ditch effort.
The petitioners, called Friends of the Barnes, are asking Orphans Court Judge Stanley Ott to rescind his earlier order, disband the Barnes' new board and put the foundation in receivership, under his supervision. Montgomery County, where the school is located, reportedly has a similar suit in the works.
Three law review articles say the original case was wrongly decided, but conventional wisdom says a successful reversal is a long shot. A ruling is a ruling. I'm no lawyer, but the shorthand reasoning seems to be "No do-overs."
No do-overs? Isn't that just what the judge granted in December 2004? Albert C. Barnes died in 1951, and Ott broke Barnes' will.
The will gave a school with a fabulous collection of paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Van Gogh, Cézanne and other masters to Montgomery County, if the state agreed to Barnes' terms. Working with education reformer John Dewey, Barnes had devised an eccentric installation that mingles Modern paintings, tools, rustic furniture, African sculpture and more, all housed inside a carefully crafted architectural milieu designed by Paul Cret -- complete with Jacques Lipchitz reliefs and a major Matisse mural -- and set in a 12-acre arboretum. Central to the bequest was a requirement that not one iota of the carefully planned Merion installation would ever be changed. Today's plan to shutter the school and build a $100-million tourist attraction six miles away in Philadelphia would seem to count as a pretty big do-over of that half-century-old covenant.
Judges don't like breaking wills. It discourages future benefactors, who would be worried about long-term stability for their own bequests.
It also emboldens others to try the same thing. Since the Barnes ruling, two additional schools have become embroiled in litigation over valuable art collections bequeathed long ago by donors. Controversial deals pending at Tennessee's Fisk University and Virginia's Randolph College are different, since both involve selling art. But the desire for a do-over is the same.
