The Pew foundation has consistently ignored criticism of its de facto takeover of the Barnes Foundation. Now, confronted by a muckraking documentary, the Pew has deigned to post answers to “frequently asked questions” about its relationship to the Barnes. It’s a disingenuous exercise. Let us count the ways. 

The Pew, the Barnes
and the art of sophistry

The Pew Charitable Trusts, headquartered in Philadelphia, is the eighth-largest charitable organization in the country. It is best known for its opinion surveys, which answer the questions the political and media establishment wish to pose.  It distributes its largesse to the arts, which gives it enormous and publicly unaccountable leverage over art institutions and artists alike, including the power to silence criticism of its own activities.

The most controversial of those activities is, of course, the Pew’s takeover of the Barnes Foundation, whose $30 billion art collection is probably unmatched in the world. When the Barnes board of trustees willfully spent down its endowment in the 1990s under Richard Glanton and Bernard Watson (still, by some miracle, its chairman), several institutions stepped in with financial assistance. Only one, however, insisted upon seizing control of the Barnes itself.

This takeover, blessed by a cynical judge (to give him the benefit of all other doubts) and abetted by Governor Rendell, is advertised daily on the hoardings around the Pew’s big hole in the ground on the Ben Franklin Parkway.

A filmmaker rebuffed

Comes now, though, the movie. Don Argott’s The Art of the Steal, having played to overflow audiences in Toronto, New York, Aspen and Los Angeles film festivals (but not at the Philadelphia festival last October) opens at the Ritz in Philadelphia on February 26, and at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute on March 12. 

Argott is an independent filmmaker who saw an important story in the Barnes and wanted to tell it. He approached the Pew repeatedly for its side of the story, as well as Bernard Watson and Derek Gillman, the Barnes Foundation’s current director. No one agreed to participate, although Rendell and former Pennsylvania Attorney General Mike Fisher did.

No doubt the Pew saw Argott as a gnat best ignored. The weakness of great power is to consider itself invulnerable. But there’s always a chink in the armor where the truth can enter. And The Art of the Steal is about to drive a tank through it.

Confronted with this public relations disaster, the Pew has at last deigned to answer, on its website a list of “frequently asked questions” about its relation to the Barnes. The Pew’s responses are, shall we say, less than candid. As a public service, I present here the Pew’s own self-generated questions with more truthful answers.

Why is the Barnes Foundation moving?

The Pew insists the Barnes’s financial condition made it impossible for it to remain in Merion. But the Barnes had (and has) saleable assets— including an unutilized 137-acre property in Chester County, plus art works not part of its gallery collection— that could restore its endowment without outside aid. Its Pew-controlled board rejected out of hand a $50 million bond-leaseback arrangement offered by Montgomery County that would have achieved the same end, at no taxpayer expense. And the Pew itself, for a fifth of the money it has supposedly raised to move the Barnes, could keep the Barnes where it is.  The Barnes is moving for one simple reason:  the Pew wants it to.

What is the Pew’s role with regard to the Barnes Foundation?

The Pew claims to have merely played the role of benefactor to the Barnes, and neither to have sought nor gained any control over it. In fact, it gained de facto operational control of the Barnes board in 2004 when Montgomery County Orphans Court Judge Stanley R. Ott agreed to a request from the Barnes and its major funders to expand the board from five to 15 members, with several of the new members subject to approval by the Pew itself. (Those trustees, once appointed, choose their own successors; through this bit of sophistry, the Pew claims to exercise no control over the Barnes.)

How much has the Pew contributed to the Barnes Foundation?

The Pew’s own figure is $24,350,000. It doesn’t mention the $150 million it claims to have raised to move the Barnes, $25 million of which actually represents taxpayer money secretly earmarked for the move. For that outlay, it has gained control of $30 billion in art.  That sounds less like a charitable contribution than a shrewd investment.

Was the Pew’s involvement in the relocation of the Barnes Foundation gallery motivated by its desire to meet the public support test required to attain public charity status?

The Pew says no. But it prominently cited its support of the Barnes in its application for recognition by the Internal revenue Service as a public charity. At the very least, its efforts to gain operational control of the Barnes would appear to constitute a serious conflict of interest.

Does the Pew have any control of or governing role with the Barnes Foundation?

“Absolutely not,” says the Pew, disingenuously. A court order, sought by the Pew, put the Pew’s appointees on the Barnes board. Even former Attorney General Mike Fisher, in The Art of the Steal, says directly that the Pew, using taxpayer money, bought control of the Barnes. Fisher should know. He was the operation’s enabler.

Aren’t Pew and others being unfaithful to Dr. Barnes’s intentions by moving the collection?

No again, says the Pew, invoking a section of the Barnes trust indenture providing that the collection might be moved or dispersed under conditions of exigency. But those conditions, as I’ve pointed out, were deliberately created and are deliberately maintained to justify the move.

Why didn’t the Pew participate in The Art of the Steal, the documentary about the Barnes Foundation?

The Pew says that it had “learned that the film was going to be severely biased.” Really? The Pew has refused to discuss or debate the move in any forum. It has ignored the torrent of criticism that has poured in from all over the country and even abroad— from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Time Magazine, The New Republic, Commentary and The London Independent, as well as from the dean of the Philadelphia architecture community, Robert Venturi. It ignored The Art of the Steal until that film threatened, as it now does, to ignite public outrage. Hence its rollout of distortions and half-truths.

The truth will out, though. It’s coming soon to a theater near you.♦


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