Why the Barnes is important

Why the Barnes is important

ROBERT ZALLER

In previous articles, I have discussed the means by which a consortium of philanthropies led by the Pew Charitable Trusts, with backing from Governor Rendell and Mayor Street, seized control of the Barnes Foundation, and considered the means by which the Barnes might be freed from their clutches and restored to financial integrity and independence.

But a larger question remains. Why—apart from legal issues about trusts, the expense of the proposed move, and the significance of the foundation’s home as a cultural landmark—should the Barnes not be relocated? Why can’t the Barnes thrive just as well downtown, where more people will be able to see its magnificent gallery collection with presumably greater convenience? If Dr. Barnes himself wanted to promote art education for the masses—the precise intent and instruction of his trust—why should the greatest number of people not have the opportunity to benefit from it? Won’t that be worth the trouble and expense? And isn’t it, in the end, truer to Barnes’s own vision itself?

Opponents of the move, of whom I am one, need to address these issues directly. And proponents of it also need to concede that something, certainly, would be lost in relocation—the integration of art and horticulture that was so much a part of Barnes’ educational design, and the unique ambience of the permanent collection gallery, which, even if recreated (as promised) down to the last detail, can never be recaptured. It is not my purpose, however, to initiate a dialogue over the merits and demerits of the move, valuable as that might be for people still sitting on the fence. My mind is made up. What I want to tell you is why it’s made up— why, in a word, the Barnes is so important to preserve as it is.

The first thing to be said about art in general is that it is the product, typically, of individual artists, creating one artifact at a time. Art exists, that is, because of aesthetic intention, applied again and again.

The right to view a Rembrandt

Over thousands of years, a great number of such artifacts have been brought into being. It is true that the majority of them has been lost or destroyed, as with most other human remains. But a large quantity survives, and the store is being added to daily. These artifacts wind up in many places— in temples, in palaces, in executive suites, in ordinary homes. Here they adorn, invite the eye, divert the imagination, incite to worship. In most places, they are ancillary to other purposes. In some, however, they are deliberately brought together for their own sake; that is, they refer primarily to themselves or to each other. When that occurs, we say we are in the presence of a collection.

Princes, popes and aristocrats collected art in the early modern world. Gradually, they displayed art works not merely for ceremonial, ideological, or ornamental purposes, but as objects of contemplation in themselves—objets d’art. With the coming of democracy, benefactors displayed their art to the general public in buildings erected for the purpose, called museums. Today the public has come to feel, somehow, a democratic right to enjoy a Rembrandt we could not possibly afford to own. Museums seem a tolerable compromise for this sense of entitlement. They enable the public to see at least some Rembrandts— and, when a special exhibition is mounted, as many more as curators can temporarily cajole out of private hands.

This is comforting in a strange but powerful way. I can’t see the little Veronica that is my favorite painting in the National Gallery of Art in London every day, but I know (or at least am reasonably confident) that it is still there, hanging in its corner and awaiting my next visit. Similarly, there is a Gericault I need to see every time I visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. When I see it in my mind’s eye, it is just where and as it should be, at the end wall of a suite of rooms. I approach it with relish; I withdraw from it with regret. Not only the painting but its surrounding space is a communal possession that I share with all others to whom it is available.

The trouble with museums

This comfort is, however, an illusion. We think of museums as permanent repositories, but museum officials can decide to shut out the public while repairs or expansions are taking place, and to reran familiar and beloved works in new and unflattering locations. Patrons of the Museum of Modern Art have recently suffered this experience. Momma’s walls do not, after all, belong to us. Worse, not only can paintings be repositioned, they can be exiled into storage or sold—“deaccessioned,” in museum parlance. To a degree most of us would find disquieting if we were fully aware of it, museums are not permanent repositories of art. More and more, they are emporiums where objects come and go.
This is not, of course, indefensible as such. Museums are dynamic entities. The purpose of any intellectually responsible exhibition is to make us look at art, whether old or new, from a fresh and therefore necessarily unfamiliar perspective. Sales or swaps that enhance core collections may benefit particular museums, even though they may remove someone’s favorite work.

Museums, therefore, occupy the midrange on a spectrum between street stalls and commercial galleries on one end and true permanent collections on the other. These latter are public benefactions secured by trust. Typically, they represent private collections accumulated by a single individual or family. Unlike museums, they neither buy nor sell, though sometimes they do borrow or loan. They represent not the shifting taste of a succession of curators and directors, but the fixed one of the original collector. This permanent imprint locates the collection in a particular moment in time, and invites us to reflect not only on individual pieces but on the ensemble as a whole, both as an aesthetic unity and as representative of an era. Great collectors leave the stamp of their vision on what they bring together, and that vision subtly binds and affects what, seen otherwise, might look quite different (for better or worse). They offer, that is, not the only or the ideal way of looking of art, but a particular, idiosyncratic, and often powerful one.

The Met vs. the Frick

Collections come and go, but those endowed in perpetuity are as close to being permanent as human vagary permits. In that sense, they are truly public in a way that museums are not. I can’t be sure the Gericault at the Met won’t be sold or stored, but I know that, say, the Turner half a mile away at the Frick Collection will be where I saw it last. In that sense, I am one of its collective owners— it is always there for me, and also for you. For a poor man (and, as far as personally acquiring a Turner is concerned, I am a very poor man indeed), that is a precious possession.

Great collections are also, as a rule, very graciously housed. They are, in fact, generally part of former residences, perhaps once the gated fortresses of the super-rich—and those, too, now belong to us. Museums are rarely like that, even if they are publicly supported. I never truly inhabit a room with fellow museum-goers; I am always made to feel I must compete— for light, for air, for space, for sightlines. This is simply in the nature of museums, although the conveyer-belt experience promoted by most museums today (long lines, special prices, timed access) seems designed to maximize one’s discomfort. It is a curious fact that modern curators behave like the robber barons of old, though they are employees whose salaries we pay.

Don’t get me wrong: I am very grateful to museums. But the world would be a very much more impoverished place if they were all we had, and the great collections disappeared into them, to lose their specific character and become simply another capital asset.

'We can always plant trees'

This applies with special force to the Barnes collection. Unlike other private collections, the Barnes Foundation was designed as a complete aesthetic experience, including the mansion that houses the permanent gallery collection and the surrounding gardens and arboretum. Barnes hung the gallery artwork with a view not only to counterpointing artistic values but to catching certain angles of light, and he aligned the exterior flora to complement the arrangement inside. All of this, of course, was intended to illustrate and reinforce the aesthetic principles he meant to inculcate through his curriculum. I know of no comparable modern example of such a completely planned, focused and integrated environment for the display of art. It speaks volumes for the ignorance—or indifference—of those members of the art establishment who have climbed aboard the Pew gravy train that not a single one has acknowledged the unique nature of the Barnes