Barnes Not Noble

The museum belongs in the city.

by Steve Conn

The people who want to preserve the status quo at the Barnes Foundation, including most recently civil rights leader Julian Bond, are clearly racists. What else can one conclude?

After all, preserving the status quo means keeping this fabulous collection of art right where it is -- in the leafy, all-white suburban enclave of Merion. And keeping the Barnes right where it is now means that those all-white neighbors will continue to exercise a stranglehold over how many people get to visit the institution.

Those NIMBY-driven neighbors can't actually dictate who will come to visit, but isn't the implication clear enough? By restricting access to the gallery, those neighbors want to keep certain kinds of people out of their fashionable white neighborhood, right? People who might live on the wrong side of City Line Avenue. People who might just be black. No busloads of black kids from the Philadelphia public schools rumbling up Latches Lane, only the occasional visits from the well-dressed kids next door at Episcopal Academy.

As it is, the Barnes functions as a cozy clubhouse for those already "in the know," -- who know how to get reservations weeks in advance, who know how to get to Latches Lane in the first place (there are no signs to direct you there). People who already live in the tony Montgomery County suburbs. These people have engaged in an implicit conspiracy to make sure that the Barnes turns its back on the city, and by extension, on the black people who live there. And now these racist conspirators have a new best friend in Julian Bond, who, according to a recent Inquirer interview, thinks this situation, which excludes countless numbers of black Philadelphians, is just fine the way it is. It is shameful.

Just as shameful, in fact, as Bond's own accusation that the current attempt to move the Barnes and change its governance is driven by racism. In fact, I don't believe most of what I've just written. But my analysis surely demonstrates just how easy it is to toss around the charge of racism, regardless of whether there is any evidence to substantiate it (and I certainly don't have any). It also demonstrates how slinging such insinuations around clouds rather than clarifies the situation.

Race and racism infect much of what has gone on and continues to go on in this society. Much, but not all. And in the case of the Barnes debate the thinly veiled charge of racism only serves to distract us all from what are the much more immediate, obvious, but less politically sexy problems that plague the institution.

Financial stagnation, over-restrictive regulations and litigious neighbors, not racism, are the real problems facing the Barnes. Albert Barnes had a phenomenal eye for art but lousy instincts about investing and administration. To continue to let his foundation be choked by his own dead hand reaching from beyond the grave is absurd.

Mr. Bond, for his part, while suggesting that racism is doing insidious work in the attempt to move the Barnes, thinks these problems are easily solved. He admits to having no real sense of the foundation's finances, but offered that perhaps more money could be raised by sending the collection out on tour again. He seemed quite oblivious to the irony thus revealed: The only way to save the status quo at the Barnes is to have the pictures more or less permanently away.

Still, however baseless or silly the accusation of racism is, it does seem to be creating the desired sideshow. Now, apparently, several foundations that might have been interested in helping the Barnes relocate, revive and prosper in the future are getting cold feet. Who wants to be perceived as racist?

Meanwhile, in the midst of the sideshow, of course, the Barnes continues to flounder. The foundation's director has wished out loud and in public for a Daddy Warbucks figure to come forward to rescue the place from its financial mess. That's about as likely as the residents of Latches Lane closing their street and hosting a "Come to the Barnes" block party. I hope she's not holding her breath.

Far from being a white power grab, as Bond and others have intimated, moving the Barnes to the center of Philadelphia does seem to be the last, best hope to put the foundation right financially. In turn, making sure that all kinds of people will get to see this astonishing collection -- far more than the few hundred now permitted each week by court order.

Steve Conn is the author of a history of American museums, Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876-1926 (University of Chicago Press). If you would like to respond to this Slant or have one of your own (850 words), contact Howard Altman, City Paper editor in chief, 123 Chestnut St., third floor, Phila., PA 19106 or e-mail altman@citypaper.net.