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The Barnes move: A fait accompli?
Victoria Skelly
The Barnes Foundation and the sounds of silence
VICTORIA SKELLY
It has been a week since I heard on the radio that Montgomery County Orphans Court Judge Stanley Ott has dismissed the request made by the Friends of the Barnes and the Montgomery County commissioners to reopen his 2004 decision allowing the Barnes Foundation to move from Merion to the Ben Franklin Parkway. The press has responded with less than spirited coverage. All the familiar and most eloquent voices in opposition to this move have been silent to date.
Why the tepid response? Why hasn’t Philadelphia reacted with the proper indignation to what can only be described as the willful squandering of its intellectual and artistic heritage? The barbarians are at the gate, and many of us Philadelphians stand here twiddling thumbs. People shake their heads and observe that the project is just too far along to quit now.
The silent PR strategy
Back in the ’90s when I was a student at the Barnes, it was whispered among those familiar with the issues that the Foundation’s management deliberately provoked consternation among its neighbors to force the amassing of huge debt in legal expenditures. Action after action seemed to bring the organization closer and closer to budgetary Armageddon, so that a “reason” might be concocted for a move. Opposition was quashed both within the Foundation and without. Now here we are, years later, after two more sets of management, and we still have had no real response to an overwhelmingly compelling set of reasons (artistic and economic, not to mention legal) why the Foundation should not move.
Derek Gillman, the Foundation’s current president, gave up speaking to the public about the planned move rather early in his tenure. (It’s good to be king!) A public relations expert was hired to prepare those bland and soothing press releases that say really nothing and seek to convince us that the move is fait accompli.
At what point can there really be a “no turning back” from this pre-planned trajectory?
Rome’s talking statues
I am reminded of a story about a certain opinionated tailor named Pasquino who lived in ancient Rome and routinely expressed in witty commentary his opinions about the misuse of power by the authorities. Lacking a local press or the Internet to post his concerns, he relied instead upon attaching his notes to a particular statue of a Greek warrior located near the Piazza Navona. Over time others added their thoughts, so that eventually it became a popular pastime for people to stop by the statue and read what had been written before the authorities came along to remove it. The statue became known as “Pasquino.”
Additional statues in Rome became “talking statues,” and as such for a time they represented the only opposition press against the tyranny of Papal governments. Of course the Vatican often attempted to silence the statues, especially Pasquino. The death penalty, confiscation of property, public humiliation, etc. were among the punishments threatened. Some Popes hired guards to monitor the statues around the clock. But nothing in the end served to silence the statues. Even when Adolph Hitler visited Rome at the height of Fascism’s grip on Europe, he was greeted with a city adorned with cardboard triumphal arches. Pasquino’s comment at the time was, “Rome of travertine, now dressed in cardboard, salutes the pale one, her future boss.”
The graffiti king’s success
Philadelphia has her own tradition of offbeat dissent. Last fall, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts invited Daryl McCray, aka “Cornbread,” to address an audience of graffiti connoisseurs at a PAFA First Friday event. I remember reading, as a teenager, of the daring adventures of this local graffiti king, who managed to scrawl his namesake over every bridge, an elephant at the Philadelphia Zoo, and even a jet that had carried Michael Jackson to our fair city. How the Cornbread story juiced those Inquirer reporters!
What would it take to get that kind of reportorial enthusiasm behind the cause of the Barnes Foundation? If we Philadelphians remain mute on the subject of the Barnes move, perhaps Rodin’s statue of The Thinker will borrow a page from the Romans and do the job for us when the Barnes Foundation takes over his neighboring Youth Study Center on the Parkway this August. “Philadelphia!” he will likely ask. “What were you thinking?”
To read responses, click here.
VICTORIA SKELLY
It has been a week since I heard on the radio that Montgomery County Orphans Court Judge Stanley Ott has dismissed the request made by the Friends of the Barnes and the Montgomery County commissioners to reopen his 2004 decision allowing the Barnes Foundation to move from Merion to the Ben Franklin Parkway. The press has responded with less than spirited coverage. All the familiar and most eloquent voices in opposition to this move have been silent to date.
Why the tepid response? Why hasn’t Philadelphia reacted with the proper indignation to what can only be described as the willful squandering of its intellectual and artistic heritage? The barbarians are at the gate, and many of us Philadelphians stand here twiddling thumbs. People shake their heads and observe that the project is just too far along to quit now.
The silent PR strategy
Back in the ’90s when I was a student at the Barnes, it was whispered among those familiar with the issues that the Foundation’s management deliberately provoked consternation among its neighbors to force the amassing of huge debt in legal expenditures. Action after action seemed to bring the organization closer and closer to budgetary Armageddon, so that a “reason” might be concocted for a move. Opposition was quashed both within the Foundation and without. Now here we are, years later, after two more sets of management, and we still have had no real response to an overwhelmingly compelling set of reasons (artistic and economic, not to mention legal) why the Foundation should not move.
Derek Gillman, the Foundation’s current president, gave up speaking to the public about the planned move rather early in his tenure. (It’s good to be king!) A public relations expert was hired to prepare those bland and soothing press releases that say really nothing and seek to convince us that the move is fait accompli.
At what point can there really be a “no turning back” from this pre-planned trajectory?
Rome’s talking statues
I am reminded of a story about a certain opinionated tailor named Pasquino who lived in ancient Rome and routinely expressed in witty commentary his opinions about the misuse of power by the authorities. Lacking a local press or the Internet to post his concerns, he relied instead upon attaching his notes to a particular statue of a Greek warrior located near the Piazza Navona. Over time others added their thoughts, so that eventually it became a popular pastime for people to stop by the statue and read what had been written before the authorities came along to remove it. The statue became known as “Pasquino.”
Additional statues in Rome became “talking statues,” and as such for a time they represented the only opposition press against the tyranny of Papal governments. Of course the Vatican often attempted to silence the statues, especially Pasquino. The death penalty, confiscation of property, public humiliation, etc. were among the punishments threatened. Some Popes hired guards to monitor the statues around the clock. But nothing in the end served to silence the statues. Even when Adolph Hitler visited Rome at the height of Fascism’s grip on Europe, he was greeted with a city adorned with cardboard triumphal arches. Pasquino’s comment at the time was, “Rome of travertine, now dressed in cardboard, salutes the pale one, her future boss.”
The graffiti king’s success
Philadelphia has her own tradition of offbeat dissent. Last fall, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts invited Daryl McCray, aka “Cornbread,” to address an audience of graffiti connoisseurs at a PAFA First Friday event. I remember reading, as a teenager, of the daring adventures of this local graffiti king, who managed to scrawl his namesake over every bridge, an elephant at the Philadelphia Zoo, and even a jet that had carried Michael Jackson to our fair city. How the Cornbread story juiced those Inquirer reporters!
What would it take to get that kind of reportorial enthusiasm behind the cause of the Barnes Foundation? If we Philadelphians remain mute on the subject of the Barnes move, perhaps Rodin’s statue of The Thinker will borrow a page from the Romans and do the job for us when the Barnes Foundation takes over his neighboring Youth Study Center on the Parkway this August. “Philadelphia!” he will likely ask. “What were you thinking?”
To read responses, click here.
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