Whither the Barnes? - controversy surrounding the Barnes Foundation's touring exhibition of French paintings - Cover Story

Art in America, March, 1994 by Anne Higonnet

In June 1991, Glanton made a deal with Alfred A. Knopf to publish a book that would reproduce paintings from the Barnes Collection for the first time in color.(22) Knopf paid the Barnes a $750,000 advance. At the same time, Samuel Newhouse, Jr., chairman of Advance Publications, which owns Knopf, announced that he was giving $2 million to Lincoln University, through the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation, which he heads. Glanton had remained a trustee of Lincoln, as well as its counsel. Spokesmen for publishers Harry Abrams and Callaway Editions complained that they had not been given an opportunity to bid against Knopf.(23) In January 1992, the de Mazia Trust sued the Barnes Foundation board of trustees and sought to have it dismissed on the grounds that the Newhouse money should rightfully have gone to the Barnes, not Lincoln University, since it was in effect a payment for the right to publish the catalogue.

But by January 1992, Glanton had already developed another scheme. The Knopf publication project would be tied to a touring exhibition. According to the National Gallery version of the story, J. Carter Brown "was approached"by Glanton.(24) But in a letter of Jan. 24, it was Brown who was pressing Glanton quite hard not only to pursue the idea of the exhibition, but also to allow the National Gallery to be the show's first venue--for free.(25) Brown advanced a number of arguments whose tone and logic suggest his eagerness. He claimed that only the National Gallery had the "size, stature, and connections" and the "specialists' knowledge" ("I hardly need to toot the horn") to organize the exhibition and its catalogue. "In sum, there is no substitute for experience," Brown wrote, "and the National Gallery has unsurpassed experience."(26) Brown also argued that the Barnes's paintings would be safer traveling than in storage.(27)

In order to justify the tour, the Barnes Trustees had to convince the court that they needed a lot of money. They presented Judge Stefan with an impressive budget and a conservation report prepared by the architectural firm H2L2. The trustees were opposed in court by the group of present and former Barnes students who were granted legal standing by the court. Student leader Nick Tinari says that he and his fellow students were motivated entirely by their belief that the Foundation's education system, which they termed "valuable and unique," was threatened by the actions of Glanton's board.(28) The Friends of the Barnes maintain--in several lengthy and extremely detailed pamphlets-that the budget the trustees presented was not accurate and that the court's decision was affected by contributions to the campaign of Ernest D. Preate, Jr., Pennsylvania's attorney general, by Glanton and his law firm.(29)

In January 1992, Tinari was expelled from the Barnes Foundation's program; in court, Glanton admitted that he ordered the expulsion. In February, Esther van Sant, the Foundation's director of education and a trustee for the de Mazia Trust, resigned under pressure from the board of trustees. In August 1992, the trustees petitioned to take over the de Mazia Trust, alleging that de Mazia had stolen paintings from the foundation. As if summing up the state of things, a group of Barnes students recently commissioned a roadside billboard that says, "The Barnes Foundation: Violation of a Public Trust is a National Disgrace."