Barnes move gets $25 million pledge
PHILADELPHIA — The Barnes Foundation, home to one of the world’s most impressive private collections of Impressionist and Postimpressionist art, will get $25 million in state money to move its gallery to downtown Philadelphia, Gov. Ed Rendell’s office said Tuesday.
The Barnes Foundation said it needs $150 million to move its collection from the small, suburban limestone gallery that pharmaceutical magnate Albert Barnes built to house it in the 1920s.
That includes $100 million to build the museum somewhere along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and $50 million to endow it, said Rebecca Rimel, president of the Pew Charitable Trusts, which is helping to raise money for the project.
“We’re going to move the Barnes where it belongs, which is downtown on the parkway, where hundreds of thousands of people can enjoy it,†said Bernard C. Watson of the Barnes Foundation board of trustees.
Foundation trustees say restrictions in Barnes’ will and zoning regulations in affluent Lower Merion Township have limited the current gallery to about 400 visitors each of the three days a week it can be open, causing the foundation to teeter on the brink of bankruptcy.
In April, the state Supreme Court threw out an appeal by a Barnes art student and faculty member who wanted to stop plans to move the multibillion-dollar collection. Opponents of the move have said it violates Barnes’ vision and destroys the paintings’ unique setting.
Rendell said the $25 million would come from a fund for capital projects in the state. That money can be used only to build the museum, not to endow it, Rendell said.
Moving the Barnes collection will turn Philadelphia “into a city that lovers of the arts and culture will have to come and see,†Rendell said.
Mayor John Street called the museum one of the “big three†projects -- slot machine gambling and an expanded convention center are the others -- that will help Philadelphia compete with cities like Boston and New York.
The Annenberg Foundation and the Lenfest Foundation are the other groups raising money for the project. Rimel wouldn’t say how much money has been raised but said a fundraising drive is planned for this year that will let the public make donations to the museum.
“Dr. Barnes really believed that this should be accessible to, as he said, the plain people,†Rimel said.
She added that “by summer, there will be a whole series of announcements about the Barnes.â€
By moving its collection of 181 Renoirs, 69 Cezannes, 60 Matisses, 44 Picassos and other works to a museum near the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Rodin Museum, the foundation says, 200,000 or more people could see it each year.
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