A distant mirror:
John G. Johnson and the Art Museum

John G. Johnson, Barnes and the Art Museum

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3 minute read
The other night, while performing Google searches on the Barnes Foundation, I stumbled upon the long-ago saga of the John Johnson art collection. It’s an old story to Philadelphians, but it was news to me. And it’s enough to terrify anyone concerned about the future of Albert Barnes’s unique collection.

John G. Johnson (1841-1917) was probably Philadelphia’s greatest lawyer of his age. At his death, the New York Times pronounced him the greatest lawyer in the English-speaking world. His clients included J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick and the Pennsylvania Railroad, then the world’s largest corporation two times over.

In his last two decades Johnson also amassed a world-class collection of some 1,300 paintings, all of them hung in his home on South Broad Street. This is where he wanted them to remain, and he said so in his will, which donated the entire collection to the citizens of Philadelphia. Much like Albert Barnes, Johnson directed that the home and the art were to be preserved just as they were. Unfortunately, as a prudent lawyer, Johnson left a small opening that allowed his will to be changed if some extraordinary unforeseen reason arose in the future.

Coming up with an excuse

After the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s present neo-classical building opened in Fairmount in 1928, it found itself with acres of empty, fireproof gallery space on its hands. So its officials and lawyers launched a campaign to acquire Johnson’s collection. By 1933 they came up with the necessary extraordinary reason to move the collection: They convinced Philadelphia’s Orphans Court that the paintings were threatened because Johnson’s home wasn't fireproof. The home was condemned and the Art Museum snatched the 1,300 paintings, in the process becoming a world-class museum without spending a cent on acquisitions. But the court insisted that the museum honor the remaining provisions of Johnson’s will— namely, to keep the collection together, intact, as a tribute to his civic generosity and his astute eye.

Flash forward to 1989. This time the Art Museum convinced the court to allow the Johnson collection to be broken up so that his paintings could be more effectively integrated into the museum’s overall collection, allowing (as the museum’s website puts it, “for a more unified presentation of European art between the 14th and the late-19th centuries.”

Does this story sound familiar?

What Barnes knew about Johnson

Albert Barnes, who died in 1951, knew full well what happened to Johnson's collection in Philadelphia. Presumably, that’s precisely why he went out of his way to protect his collection by creating his own private foundation. He despised the Art Museum and what he saw as its commercialization of art. More than anything, he wanted his collection kept out of the Art Museum’s hands.

So here we are in the 21st Century. Once again an Orphans’ Court (this time in Montgomery County) is being used to break a collector’s will— in this case, Barnes’s. Again a world-class collection is vulnerable and seemingly defenseless, and the Art Museum is the likely savior if the Barnes’s move to downtown Philadelphia fails. Once again, such a rescue would gain billions worth of art for the Art Museum at a cost of pennies— a bargain that most museum trustees would find hard to resist.

What is the lesson here? You may find it in the more recent story of another great Philadelphia collector, Walter Annenberg. Prior to his death in 2002, Annenberg was courted for his collection by several of the world’s great art museums, including Philadelphia’s. He ultimately gave his collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York because, he said, it offered the best likelihood that his collection— what he considered the greatest tribute to his legacy— would be kept intact.

It’s not too late for Philadelphians to respect Albert Barnes’s will— and, by implication, everyone else’s— and in the process prevent other collectors from being driven away as well.

Scott Jefferys lives in Hillside, N.J.


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