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The incredible shrinking Barnes, or: Friday the 13th on the Parkway
Another Barnes groundbreaking
Robert Zaller
In The Art of the Steal, the the as-yet unreleased documentary on the theft of the Barnes collection, the October 2008 groundbreaking ceremony for the "new" Barnes on the Ben Franklin Parkway occupies a pivotal place. Actually, as I pointed out at the time, no ground was actually broken, because the space was still occupied by the hapless Youth Detention Center, which endured a couple of whacks on the side instead, like a horse being beaten by a peasant in a Russian novel.
If I'd forgotten that episode— which I haven't— my memory would have been refreshed by the film, which shows me paying my disrespects to Governor Rendell as he entered the festivities. But apparently the Barnes board and its co-conspirators suffered a blackout, because last Friday they broke ground all over again.
Why?
Maybe they assumed that the public's memory was short, or that another gala would distract attention from the fact that, behind the fences and hoardings, the ground so generously leased by city fathers for the new Barnes at $10 a year had turned into a local version of Potter's Field, sodden and unweeded. Or maybe the movers wanted to try their Triskadelphian (as opposed to Philadelphian) luck in having a new party 13 months after the old one, on a Friday the 13th.
Whatever, it was a bust. The rains came, Governor Rendell didn't show, and the media didn't bite.
The gushing Inquirer
What has happened in the past year? The Detention Center was demolished, its sculptures removed and its juvenile clients relocated to facilities that leaked in the winter. A partial rendering of the new, bargain basement Barnes was unveiled, reduced from 120,000 square feet to 93,000. The Inquirer, as predictable on the subject of the Barnes as Fox News on Sarah Palin, greeted the event with hosannas, but others were less kind. Robert Venturi, Philadelphia's pre-eminent architect, called the new Barnes "a ridiculous waste of money," and Nicholas Ouroussoff, the New York Times architecture critic, described it as the best argument yet for keeping the Barnes in Merion. Quite a sendoff.
Speaking of money, the incredible shrinking Barnes still can't fit into its budget. Its promised endowment has been cut in half, and still the move is $50 million short of its severely underestimated goal—exactly where it was three and a half years ago, when Rebecca Rimel, head of the Pew Charitable Trusts, described fund-raising efforts as "rounding third base."
Doesn't Rimel read the sports pages? History has already recorded 2009 as the year when Philadelphia forgot to cover third base.
The view at the Times
The movers put out a publicity photo of Mayor Nutter and his fellow worthies, feet to the shovel, above a coffin-sized hole crested by mud. The Inquirer dutifully published it.
No one else out of town did. Instead, the New York Times showed Friends of the Barnes protesters— and, if their signs weren't clear enough in the photo (they were), it reproduced the text of one in the accompanying article: "Crime Scene: Do Not Enter. Destruction of National Landmark in Progress."
The same photo was picked up elsewhere in the country, and also appeared in Canada. The times, they are a-changin'.
Inside the big tent, students from Lincoln, bused in to serenade the bigwigs, had their musical program cut short, and found the fancy food was not intended for them. Maybe they rode home in the back of the bus?
Albert Barnes and Horace Bond, who shared a common dream of empowering African-Americans, would be turning over in their graves. But Simon Legree can rejoice in his.
As a wise man said, you can break ground only once. And you can break wind once too often.♦
To read a related commentary by Victoria C. Skelly, click here.
If I'd forgotten that episode— which I haven't— my memory would have been refreshed by the film, which shows me paying my disrespects to Governor Rendell as he entered the festivities. But apparently the Barnes board and its co-conspirators suffered a blackout, because last Friday they broke ground all over again.
Why?
Maybe they assumed that the public's memory was short, or that another gala would distract attention from the fact that, behind the fences and hoardings, the ground so generously leased by city fathers for the new Barnes at $10 a year had turned into a local version of Potter's Field, sodden and unweeded. Or maybe the movers wanted to try their Triskadelphian (as opposed to Philadelphian) luck in having a new party 13 months after the old one, on a Friday the 13th.
Whatever, it was a bust. The rains came, Governor Rendell didn't show, and the media didn't bite.
The gushing Inquirer
What has happened in the past year? The Detention Center was demolished, its sculptures removed and its juvenile clients relocated to facilities that leaked in the winter. A partial rendering of the new, bargain basement Barnes was unveiled, reduced from 120,000 square feet to 93,000. The Inquirer, as predictable on the subject of the Barnes as Fox News on Sarah Palin, greeted the event with hosannas, but others were less kind. Robert Venturi, Philadelphia's pre-eminent architect, called the new Barnes "a ridiculous waste of money," and Nicholas Ouroussoff, the New York Times architecture critic, described it as the best argument yet for keeping the Barnes in Merion. Quite a sendoff.
Speaking of money, the incredible shrinking Barnes still can't fit into its budget. Its promised endowment has been cut in half, and still the move is $50 million short of its severely underestimated goal—exactly where it was three and a half years ago, when Rebecca Rimel, head of the Pew Charitable Trusts, described fund-raising efforts as "rounding third base."
Doesn't Rimel read the sports pages? History has already recorded 2009 as the year when Philadelphia forgot to cover third base.
The view at the Times
The movers put out a publicity photo of Mayor Nutter and his fellow worthies, feet to the shovel, above a coffin-sized hole crested by mud. The Inquirer dutifully published it.
No one else out of town did. Instead, the New York Times showed Friends of the Barnes protesters— and, if their signs weren't clear enough in the photo (they were), it reproduced the text of one in the accompanying article: "Crime Scene: Do Not Enter. Destruction of National Landmark in Progress."
The same photo was picked up elsewhere in the country, and also appeared in Canada. The times, they are a-changin'.
Inside the big tent, students from Lincoln, bused in to serenade the bigwigs, had their musical program cut short, and found the fancy food was not intended for them. Maybe they rode home in the back of the bus?
Albert Barnes and Horace Bond, who shared a common dream of empowering African-Americans, would be turning over in their graves. But Simon Legree can rejoice in his.
As a wise man said, you can break ground only once. And you can break wind once too often.♦
To read a related commentary by Victoria C. Skelly, click here.
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