BATHING BEAUTY AT THE BARNES

Sculpture, right, in main entrance

THE GHOST OF DR. BARNES

Old Barnes Foundation in Lower Merion, Pennsylvania

I yesterday visited the old Barnes Foundation (since moved to Center City, Philadelphia), now converted the Frances M. Maguire Art Museum at St. Joseph's University. I was single visitor.

Eerie. The conversion prompted many memories. Old bones. Old ghosts.

—R.D.C.

The PJ depends on reader support. Please help us by contributing financially to Philabooks@yahoo.com via PayPal, or by contributing editorial content via WritersClearinghouse.yahoo.com.| Established 1976 Richard Carreño, Editor © MMXXVI WritersClearinghouse All Rights Reserved.

An Opposing View: He's Entitled

Albert Barnes and Paul Guillaume

By Robert Zeller

June 03, 2014

Albert Barnes by Giorgio de Chirico

 

My colleague Richard Carreño [at BroadStreetReview.com] compares the Barnes Foundation’s art collection, of which some 800 pieces were hung on permanent display in Merion, to that of Paul Guillaume in the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris. There are some important differences, however.

Giorgio de Chirico's portrait of Barnes.

 

Guillaume’s collection, as Richard points out, consists of 145 works. Barnes owned some 350 works by Cézanne, Renoir, Matisse, and Picasso alone. In addition to the works in the galleries, he had ten times as many in other repositories, notably his estate at Ker-Feal. These included works by Corot, Courbet, Millet, and De Chirico, the latter a portrait of Barnes himself. He wasn’t just hiding them; they simply didn’t fit in with the conception he had for the galleries. In the case of De Chirico, Barnes may simply not have wished to call undue attention to himself in what was designed as a pedagogical setting. Guillaume’s portrait of himself by Modigliani does hang in l’Orangerie. De gustibus.

Fondation Louis Vuitton

'Anchors Away!'
Photo: WC News Service/Richard Carreño

ALL HAT, NO CATTLE

By RICHARD CARREÑO

PARIS [WC News Service] -- The super rich and powerful get all sorts things named for them; their fabulous wealth underwriting  ego-centric municipal projects from hospitals and sports stadiums to theatres and, increasingly for those billionaire one-per-centers who also fancy themselves as art connoisseurs, eponymous museums that showcase their putative, ahem, 'connoisseurship.'

 

Step forward, please, France's richest man, one Bernard Arnault, chairman of the luxury goods conglomerate, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, who has also created what may be one of the the world's worst contemporary art museums, the newly-minted Fondation Louis Vuitton, a Frank Gehry-designed behemoth that rises up in Paris' principal park, the Bois de Boulogne.

The mega-million-euro museum, resembling an ocean-going ark with a very large prow, opened in late 2014. I got around to it earlier this month.

True, the museum doesn't bear Arnault's name. Never mind. Arnault is Vuitton, and, in the tony precincts of the 16th, Mayfair, and the Upper East Side, everyone knows it. That, seemingly, is enough for the vainglorious Arnault.

More Barnes Kvetching....

Dr. Albert Barnes

Albert Barnes and Paul Guillaume

By Robert Zaller Posted 3 June 2014 BroadStreetReview.com

Robert Zaller

My colleague Richard Carreño compares the Barnes Foundation’s art collection, of which some 800 pieces were hung on permanent display in Merion, to that of Paul Guillaume in the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris. There are some important differences, however.

 

Read More....

http://broadstreetreview.com/art-architecture/albert-barnes-and-paul-guillaume

 

THE TORTURED LIFE OF SCOFIELD THAYER By James Dempsey

DIAL 'T' FOR THAYER

By Richard Carreño

[Writers Clearinghouse News Service]

As its editor, patron, and publisher, Scofield Thayer revamped the Dial, an early 20th century literary monthly based in New York, into what today's readers might recognise as a late 20th century version of The New Yorker -- on steroids. Not for the little old lady from Dubuque, nor, really, for the patrician salons of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.

 

Thayer (1889-1982) himself was a wealthy, blue-blood (Scofield, PUL-lezze), born in the central Massachusetts mill town of Worcester. In the course six short years from 1920, Thayer harnessed bursts of inspiration and exasperation to interpret a then-burgeoning 'modernist' creativity (in poetry, literature, and art) to a growing urban, upper middle-brow readership. The Dial was a savvy, avant-garde periodical. But Thayer never walked on the wild side, inviting legal censorship.



James Dempsey

In one typical issue alone, his contributors included T.S. Eliot, John Dos Passos, George Santayana, D.H. Lawrence, Gilbert Seldes, William Butler Yeats, and Wallace Stevens. There was never a culture magazine quite like it before, nor arguably one since that could match Thayer's Dial for literary star-power and influence.

 

Thayer published then-controversial writers (including Ezra Pound); thought enough of James Joyce that he gifted him several thousand dollars in today's money; and regularly gave E.E. Cummings a literary platform. (And his blessing to bed is wife. Elaine Orr Thayer was an angelic-looking knock-out, who also liked to screw around).

Tale of Two Museums

Chez Paul at 22 ave Foch

L'Orangerie

 Musée de l'Orangerie and Barnes Foundation Share the Same Muse
By Richard Carreño Bio
[WritersClearinghouse News Service]

Paris

The stats have an eerie familiarity: Scores of paintings by Chaim Soutine, Pablo Picasso, Jean Renoir, Henri Mattisse, Henri Rousseau, Amedeo Modigliani and other Impressionists and post-Impressionists, and all assembled by a fiercely independent collector who pioneered new ground in introducing modern art to 20th century audiences. The Barnes Foundation collection in Philadelphia, maybe? In considering the numbers and artists, American museum-goers can be easily forgiven for free-associating with that Philadelphia institution, the world's largest repository such modern works. And, of course, they would be wrong. At least, in Paris.

Welcome to the Musée de l'Organerie, home of the Walter-Guillaume Collection, an array of 145 paintings that rivals the Barnes as a showcase of many of the same modern artists who once called upon Paris for inspiration and livelihood. For Philadelphians, especially those seeped in the lore of the Barnes collection and its visionary founder, the eccentric, taciturn Dr. Alfred C. Barnes, the Orangerie is a kind of foreign pilgrimage to a place that can rightfully be called the Barnes' French 'bookend,' even its precursor.

That the two museum collections are almost a matched set, in presenting a similar catalogue of artists and their works, is hardly coincidental, in that Barnes (1872-1951) and the Orangerie collection's founder, Paul Guillaume (1891-1934), equally admired and promoted the same favored artists. Similarities between the collectors, who were in equal parts friends, competitors, and business associates, don't stop there.

Berlin's Arts Mojo Returns



Museum Berggruen, Berlin

'RE-GENERATED' ART

BY RICHARD CARRENO
[WRITERSCLEARINGHOUSE NEWS SERVICE]
BERLIN
The 'boys' are back in town.

 

Welcome Matisse, Picasso, Klee. And dozens of other Modernist artists, who, as in the pre-World War II era, are again the talk of town.

 

These mostly 20th-century artists, notoriously labelled by Nazi censors for their advocacy of 'degenerate' art (read Modernism, or 'Jewishness') and who Adolf Hitler personally dismissed as not upholding the Aryan 'ideal' of National Socialism, have found a new, ever-widening berth in Berlin. Once purged and confiscated from then-existing museums and stolen from private collectors, masterworks by these formerly banished artists are now an increasing force within Berlin's ambitiously expanding museum community. This particularly in the last decade as Berlin brims again with Expressionists, Impressionists, and Surrealists in exhibits at the Museum of Design; the Museum of Modern Art, Photography and Architecture; and the Brüke (Bridge) Museum; and even in old venues such as pre-war Old National Gallery. Also add a new exhibit of 450 works by Salvador Dali, each of which would have made Hitler gag.

 

See You at the Barnes? All Depends

Psst! Meet in the back

For Some, Opening Day Is 15 May;
For Others,  a Wait to 19 May

Thank you for joining us on Tuesday, May 15 from 10:00 am to 12:00 pm for our Operations Dress Rehearsal in preparation for the opening of the Barnes in Philadelphia. We greatly appreciate your participation in testing our many new systems and staff in advance of the public opening.

When you arrive at the Barnes, please park in our parking lot located on Pennsylvania Avenue between 20^th and 21^st Street (the entrance is in the middle of the block). Staff will greet you in our central outdoor plaza off of the parking lot and provide you additional directions for the day.

You will essentially embark on a “scavenger hunt” to test several standard visitor functions like ticketing, audio guides, shop purchases, and membership sales. We will be using “faux” money during your transactions, but the Shop will also be available for real purchases if interested. During the course of your visit, you will have an opportunity to explore all of our new visitor amenities.

Once you have completed the various tasks, we will gather in the Auditorium for discussion and to complete an anonymous questionnaire. We very much appreciate your candor in helping us deliver the most welcoming, enjoyable and enriching experience for our guests.

Please let us know if you have any questions in advance of your arrival on May 15. We look forward to welcoming you to the Barnes in Philadelphia!

Molly Walker

Volunteer Coordinator
The Barnes Foundation
2025 Benjamin Franklin Parkway
Philadelphia, PA 19130

Letters to the Editor



Blowing Smoke
 Dr. Albert C. Barnes, founder of the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia

Boo Hoo
Darsh Gone, Dr. Barnes
is Still Getting Dissed

(In response to 'Matisse's Revenge,' published in the BroadStreetReview.com and below).

Thanks for your letter. We'll post it soon.
Sincerely,
Dan Rottenberg
Editor

On Oct 17, 2011, at 8:40 PM....

Comments:
I don't understand why so many presumably well informed writers feel it
necessary to slime Albert Barnes and why editors (Dan?) print this trash. In
a comparison of Matisse collections, is it necessary to allege Barnes'
marital infidelity? Do we need to read ONCE AGAIN that Barnes was
"irascible" and etc and etc ad nauseam? The man was an astonishingly
courageous connoisseur who was widely villified by "experts" and yet
assembled the breathtaking collection we all treasure. Show him some
respect!

Donald Eckard
St. Davids, PA 19087

Dan Rottenberg, Editor
Broad Street Review
1315 Walnut St.
Suite 904
Philadelphia PA 19107
Phone: (215) 735-1455Fax: (215) 735-1455
drottenberg@broadstreetreview.com

Museum Mile: Philadelphia's Parkway Museums

Philadelphia's Parkway Muses 

By Jackie Atkins

[Writers Clearinghouse News Service] 

Museum Mile: Philadelphia's Parkway Museums

By Richard Carreno

WritersClearinghousePress

180 pp $19.99

ISBN: 978-1-105-14489-9 

AT a glance, it's simply a beautiful Philadelphia reproduction of the Champs-Elysée. But for Richard Carreño, it's 'Museum Mile,' the core of Philadelphia's museums and galleries on the city's famed Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

In Museum Mile: Philadelphia's Parkway Museums, Carreño looks deep into this street-scape for its architectural and artistic resources, embodied in the Parkway's venerable public arts and cultural spaces. In all, he canvasses more than a dozen of the city's arts institutions. Sometimes he strays in the name of local insights -– as far afield even as Jerusalem and Nice, France.

The book gets much closer to home with Carreño's sharp and reflective appraisal of changes at the Barnes Foundation museum. Significantly, Museum Mile coincides with the debut in 2012 of the 'new' Barnes, now the on the Parkway's newest cultural jewel.

Not much has escaped the author as he examines and deconstructs paintings with the fervor of an explorer and teacher. The artists whose compositions he describes come under as equal scrutiny as their works themselves. Similarly, administrative and curatorial staff members, and even some of Philadelphia's most prominent arts donors and financiers, never go unchallenged.

Carreño looks 'behind' the canvass. Before addressing the hidden techniques of the sporting art of Alfred J. Munnings, Carreño carefully scrutinizes this English country artist's background to explain the influence of Munnings' life experiences in his portrayals of uncommon horses and their equally uncommon riders.

Carreño introduces Michael Taylor, until recently modern art curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, as 'part scholar, part art historian, and part sleuth.' He describes his pioneering shows, and how Taylor singularly captures the importance, need, and workmanship of a museum curator.

Small tidbits make reading Museum Mile informative, substantive, and enlightening.

Not contented with just profiles of artists and the museums that showcase their work, Carreño spins tales of Philadelphia politics and intrigues as they relate the Museum Mile's art world. Neither the controversial founder of the Barnes Foundation, Dr. Albert C. Barnes, nor the film, The Art of the Steal, a screed against the Barnes' move from Merion in suburban Philadelphia to the Parkway, escape Carreño's critique.

Such seemingly mundane issues as the advisability of backpack captivity by the staff at the National Museum of American Jewish History and, more important, often draconian security measures at the Philadelphia Museum of Art get special attention from the author.

Even those familiar with Philadelphia's artistic treasures will come away, after reading the almost forty essays in Museum Mile, with previously unknown insights and, yes, some juicy morsels. From the grandness of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, to the historical roots of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, to the sheer wonder of the Barnes Foundation museum, Richard Carreño informs and edifies the reader in a knowledgeable work.

(Jackie Atkins, a short story and screenplay writer, lives in Cape May, New Jersey).

Letters to the Editor

My Pal, the Gangsta Scion Walter Annenberg

Oh Yeah, the Author?
That Would Be Me

In response to my article on the Musee Matisse and the Barnes Foundation museum, posted yesterday at the BroadStreetReview.com, BSR received today the following letter from Nick Tinari, a Philadelphia lawyer. The Junto's version of same story is below. -- The Editor.

On Oct 5, 2011,
So rife with inaccuracies and unattributed statements as to be a complete fiction.

First sentence: a first year art student would know that Matisse was not an Impressionist.

Next, the Merion gallery is not a "villa", it was purpose built as a gallery for a school (not a museum) from day one. The author must want to impress readers with his knowledge of touristy sounding words like "villa" and his worldliness at having visited some, but he is completely ignorant of the history of the Barnes Foundation and of architecture in general.

Next, the author cites no source for the statement that Barnes disliked the mural and for the conclusion that the two men parted association. The evidence is to the contrary, since there are Matisse works in the Barnes Foundation that postdate the mural.

I could go on, but I think this is evidence enough that the author is working in the realm of fantasy. Maybe it makes a nice story, but it's not a true story. A true story would be how know-nothings like the author are now running the Foundation and how, thanks to them and the ancient animosity against the foundation of gangster scion Walter Annenberg, the mural will end up in a place the painter and his patron never intended it to be.

nick tinari
jenkintown

The BSR's Editor's Response:

Thanks for your letter. We'll post it soon.

That reference in the blurb to Matisse as an Impressionist was my error; I've corrected it.

Sincerely,
Dan Rottenberg
Editor

Art Review

Now you see it. Now you don't. The Card Players from Barnes, in photo, at  the Met. Actual painting not on view at Barnes. Photo: Richard Carreno/Writers Clearinghouse

At Met 'Party,'
Barnes Cézanne is No-Show


By Richard Carreño
[Writers Clearinghouse News Service] 
Imagine if the Metropolitan Museum of Art gave a party for Paul Cézanne and two celebrity guests, one from Philadelphia, failed to show up.

hat's what happened this week when the Met, in New York, tried to narrate Cézanne's iconic Card Players compositions in a one-all, tell-all installation. The result was well-conceived, ill-executed; two of the five paintings in the thematic series, including the one held by the Barnes Foundation, weren't there.

In place of the real thing, full-sized photographs of the works figure in the show. Moreover, these MIAs, depicting the largest canvases in the series, are also positioned on featured wall space.



Was the Met's Gary Tinterow, who curated the show in concert with The Courtauld Gallery, in London, trying to tell us something?

Could be. But nuance doesn't come easy to Tinterow, whose personality is as starchy as his title, Englehard chairman of the Department of Nineteeth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art. In other words, he's a one-man band.

The show, titled 'Cézanne's Card Players,' is really a mis-nomer, given that the Met and The Courtauld, where the exhibit was first installed through early this year, knew all along that a more appropriate title would have been 'Cezanne's Card Plays -- Minus Two.' The exhibit runs through May 8.

Actually, it gets worse.


As part of the over-all story line, Tinterow had also hoped to include Cézanne's The Smoker in the show. But that canvas, owned by the State Hermitage Museum, is also missing-in-action, caught up in a diplomatic squabble involving government-run Russian museums over a ruling in a American court. At the heart of the dispute is whether a cache of orthodox Jewish documents in Russia should be transferred to a Hasidic sect, the Chabad-Lubavitch movement based in the United States. Until that issue gets resolved, the Russian-owned works are staying put.

Why the five Cézanne pictures, depicting peasants from Aix-en-Provence intently playing their card games, have not been reunited also involves legalities -- as well as a stifling misunderstanding of public service. Yes, the specter of Dr. Albert C. Barnes (1872-1951), the eponymous founder of the soon-to-be Philadelphia-based museum, again rears his head. The Grinch who won't go away.

'It'd take a court order,' Tinterow told me, when I asked whether he actually had sought the Barnes work. 'It's not going to happen.'

Well, maybe.

The small show, of only about a score of major oils and drawings displayed a foyer and two gallery rooms, is the little engine that could. Despite the contretemps over the missing pictures, Tinterow & Co. were able to enlist other loan-friendly museums in fleshing out Cézanne's exploration in composition, color, and size in the five similar pictures. Two line drawings are on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, an institution whose director, Timothy Rub, appreciates the operative maximum, 'If you don't give, you don't get.'

Credit for getting it also goes to the Worcester Art Museum; the Pierpont Morgan Library; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington. The three Card Players oils are from the Musée d'Orsay (its version, circa 1892-1896), The Courtauld (also circa 1892-1896), and from the Met itself. The Met's version was created by Cézanne (1839-1906) late in his life, sometime between 1890 and 1892.

A fourth in the series is privately held.


The fifth, created about the same time as the version at the Met, is squirreled away at the Barnes, where it remains grounded, quarantined by of Dr. Barnes' injunction that pieces in his collection never be loaned. The work, amazingly enough, is among about 60 works by Cézanne owned by the Barnes.

Bad guys? Dr. Barnes is surely one. Could his will have been over-riden, as was done allowing the museum to move to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway? Probably. But Barnes director Derek Gilmore and foundation trustees are between a rock and hard place. With the controversy surrounding the museum's Center City move still an open wound, it's likely been decided that over-turning Dr. Barnes' mean-spirited, anti-loan policy needs to wait until the dust settles around the relocation issue.

Yet one wonders, if the Cézanne show had been organized by Michael Taylor, the PMA's modern art curator, whether the Barnes picture would have at least been in the exhibit. An example of Taylor's skill in assembling complex exhibitions, highlighted by a complicated web of loans, will be on display next month when his Marc Chagall show is launched. Taylor is a brilliant tactician. And a master schmoozer.

Meantime, if you hope to round out the Met's 'Cézanne Card Players' experience with a side visit to the Barnes, don't plan on an excursion any time soon. The Barnes' Joueurs de cartes is, according to the museum's website, 'not on view.'

Museum Mile: The Directory

Almost at Every Turn,

Image of sculpture that will grace entrance
 to PAFA's new pedestrian mall at Cherry Street.

Parkway Turns up a Museum

By Richard Carreno
[Writers Clearinghouse News Service]

Academy of Natural Sciences

1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway
http://www.ansp.org/
215.299.1000
The academy, founded in 1812, is the oldest natural history museum in the Americas.
Open Monday-Friday, 10 am to 4:30 pm; Weekends, 10 am to 5 pm. Closed Thanksgiving, Christmas day, and New Year's Day.
Admission fee.

Barnes Foundation
Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 20th Street
http://www.barnesfoundation.org/
610.667.0290 (Lower Merion)
The foundation, now located in suburban Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, will move its art collection to a new home on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in 2011. The museum features the world's largest single collection of Impressionist paintings.
Admission fee.

Franklin Institute
222 North 20th Street
www.fi.edu
215.448.1200
The institute, a science museum, honors Benjamin Franklin, America's first scientist.
Open everyday, 9:30 am to 5 pm. Closed Thanksgiving, Christmas eve, and Christmas day. Admission fee.

Moore College of Art & Design
Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 20th Street
http://www.moore.edu/
215.965.4000
The Galleries at Moore present works by artists from around the world, as well as by alumni.
Open Monday to Friday, 11 am to 7 pm; Saturday, 11 am to 5 pm. Summer hours: Monday to Friday, from 10 am to 5 pm. Closed Sundays and all academic and legal holidays.
Free.

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
North Broad Street at Cherry Street
http://www.pafa.org/
215.972.7600
The academy is the country's oldest art museum and art school. Its collection features American paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, ranging from the 18th century through to the 21st century.
Open Tuesday to Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm; Sunday, 11 am to 5 pm. Closed Mondays and legal holidays.
Admission fee.

Philadelphia Museum of Art
Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 26th Street
http://www.philamuseum.org/
215.763.8100
The PMA is an encyclopedic museum, though, based on an informal agreement with the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, the museum defers to the Penn Museum regarding extensive collections in archaeology and anthropology. The PMA features more than 225,000 individual artworks in its Main Building and in its satellite, the Perelman Building.
Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10 am to 5 pm; Fridays, to 8:45 pm. Closed Mondays.
Admission fee (Donation requested on first Sundays).

Rodin Museum
Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 22nd Street
http://www.rodinmuseum.org/
215.763.8100
The museum, administered by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, houses the world's largest collection of original casts by Auguste Rodin.
Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10 am to 5 pm. Closed Mondays and legal holidays.
Joint admission fee with PMA. Otherwise donation requested.

University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
3620 South Street
http://www.penn.museum/
215.898.4001
Though located in University City, the Penn Museum, as it is more commonly known, bookends the collection at the PMA in areas of archaeology and anthropology.
Open Tuesday to Saturday, 10 am to 4:30 pm; Wednesday, 10 am to 8 pm; Sunday, 1 pm to 5 pm. Closed Mondays and legal holidays.
Donation.

For more information: Parkway Museums District via www.parkwaymuseumsdistrict.org.

Bricks & Mortar

The museum will be located at 20th Street and the Parkway.



What it will look like when finished.






Looking southwest from 20th Street. Photos/Writers Clearinghouse



Barnes' Foundation



The Barnes Foundation, to open on the Benjamin Parkway, is making headway. When completed next year, the new facility will house the museum's stellar collection of Impressionist paintings. The functions of the foundation, including its landscaping and art history instruction, will remain in sububurban Lower Merion, where Dr. Albert Barnes first located the instituition. 



Philly Philanthropists Reach Out to Israel

'New' Israel Museum is Beneficiary

By Richard Carreño

[WritersClearinghouse News Service]

The Art of the Steal, a 2009 'mockmentary' by local director Don Argott, putatively uncovered how the Barnes Foundation was 'stolen' by Philadelphia's Establishment power brokers who, working as a secretive cabal of evil, decreed that the museum move from his established home in suburban Philadelphia to a new venue on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. All that was missing was, cackle, cackle, a witches' brew.

Amid a din-din-din Jaws-like musical leitmotif, the film was more creepy conspiracy than well-crafted agit-prop, a la Michael Moore. Moreover, Steal's theme, how the will and wishes of the foundation's eponymous founder Dr. Albert G. Barnes, were being thwarted by Gov. Edward Rendell, the Pew Charitable Trusts, tourism interests, and other Satanic forces has been oft-repeated, and, by now, a tiresome conceit. Boring.

Anyway, the 'new' Barnes, home to world's greatest collection of French Impressionism, is scheduled to debut next year on Museum Mile. This, despite witchcraft, or -- as more likely the case -- good stewardship by the city's arts community.

The film survives as a curiosity. As well as proof that Dr. Barnes' well-known delusional penchant to view life as a vast conspiracy is still alive in well in Philadelphia.

Otherwise, The Art of the Steal is mostly forgettable.

But not easily forgiven.

Regardless of its risible single-minded silliness, the film is also remarkably slimy.

This is no better highlighted than how the picture mocks Gerry Lenfest and Ray Perelman, then key board members of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and prominent PMA benefactors, as 'spokes' in Philadelphia's Axis of Evil.

Lenfest is slimed with 'a powerful conflict of interest.' Perelman gets slimed as 'a nasty old man.'

***
A recent visit to Jerusalem, where the Israel Museum is located, was perfectly timed. Not by me. Just good fortune. The museum, an encyclopedic repository of Jewish history and art and a clear contender for membership among the world's great museums, had just reopened weeks before after a three-year renovation.

Among other reasons for my visit to Israel, I was eager to see works by Marc Chagall at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and, most important, encounter the so-called Chagall Windows at the Synagogue of the Haddassah-Hebrew University Medical Center, also in Jerusalem.

Again, my timing was fortuitous. The synagogue had also just reopened, after a year's closing forced upon it by structural work that was being undertaken at the hospital.

I was particularly struck by the Israel Museum -- and by the unexpected. Its New York-born director, James S. Snyder, whose mandate was to modernize and reorganize, has in fact recreated the just-45-year-old institution. (In 1965, the embryonic museum was the vision of Jerusalem's legendary mayor, Tedi Kolek).

'Its status and reputation is linked with what has always been a decent display of ancient and contemporary art,' Time Out Israel reported last month. 'But its old structure and outdated layout was cramped and inconvenient -- hence the decision to revamp it almost in its entirety,'

Enter Synder, 58, who joined the museum in 1996.

'...[M]any people do not know what to make of him,' The New York Times recently reported. 'He has never acquired Israeli citizenship or learned more than basic Hebrew. In a country where dressing up often means donning a clean T-shirt, he has kept the look of an Ivy League professor of a generation ago....'

Despite a traditional appearance, Synder introduced one skill to the museum that's thoroughly modern -- fundraising on a worldwide scale. The renovation budget was $100-million.

***

I looked up to a plaque of about about 50 names as I entered the museum. These were major contributors from around the world, and those also willing to donate $100,000 annually to the museum.

Not surprisingly, several of names were those of well-known New Yorkers.

Only one city, Philadelphia, other than New York, had more than one benefactor.

One was Gerry Lenfest. The other, Ray Perelman.

Seniors

Museum Culture Vultures
Squeeze Senior Citizens

By Richard Carreño

[Writers Clearinghouse News Service]

Want to see Picasso's works at the Philadelphia Museum of Art? Or, say, works by Benjamin West and Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts? Or, simply the grandest collection of French Impressionists anywhere when the Barnes Foundation opens next year on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

Even as the economy remains in the tank, Philadelphia's great museums are squeezing their visitors with ever-growing admission fees. Sticker shock isn't just for the car lot anymore.

Not surprisingly, Philly's seniors, many on fixed incomes, are the hardest hit as local museums seek to dig out their respective financial dilemmas (endowments are just growing back to pre-crash values) by socking it big time to one-off visitors.

But are price-gouging fees really helping the museums to turn around? Hardly. Actually, admission revenue only represents for most museums about two to four percent of their total annual income.

Though they are loath to admit it, many museum administrators see high gate fees -- as high as $16 for a one-time visit to the PMA, plus another $25 to include a major show -- as a way to create a wider membership base. If more and more museum-goers are frightened away by outrageous single admissions and ticket fees to blockbuster shows, the logic goes, more of them will be seduced into becoming annual members at seemingly more modest and economic rates. Blockbuster included.

In theory, this Machiavellian maneuvering makes sense. More members increase a wider base for fundraising and hyped-up shopping in over-priced museum stores. Membership also increases an institution's bragging rights to 'loyalty' when it seeks public, corporate, and foundation support, and most important of all, when it turns to the real treasury that keeps a museum afloat, private donations by the rich and famous or, simply, the rich and rich.

As for John Q. Public -- especially John Q. Public senior citizen -- less is said. With museum memberships between the $75 to $100 figure annually, again many seniors here have to take another hit as they seek out the city's patrimony. Or, of course, seniors can avail themselves of discounted pricing, from $16 to $14 (older than 65). Blockbuster not included.

Oddly, this pricing policy runs counter to that at many art institutions from coast to coast -- and in Europe -- that are increasingly understanding that quick hits at the turnstile don't add up to long-range profit, nor, as important, good will. In England, national museums are free. In France, deep discounts are offered to seniors. The same in Israel.

The PMA, when hiking its general admission fee last year from $14 to $16, also, in a particularly Scrooge-like move, reduced its pay-what-wish Sundays, from every Sunday to once a month. PAFA dropped its free Sundays entirely.

Thankfully, three major Philadelphia museums have adhered to free admissions, the Woodmere Museum in Chestnut Hill, the LaSalle University Art Museum, and the University of Pennsylvania Museum. (The Penn Museum recommends a suggested donation. In other words, pay what you want).

These Philly museums, and others around the world, understand that free-will offerings improve the bottom line in non-intuitive ways. More people means more spending in museums stores. At the PMA, more people also means more people parking in its lucratively income-producing parking garage. And lastly, of course, free admissions bring great art to all the people -- despite their incomes.

The PMA, one of the world's great museums, has yet another reason to adopt a free-will offering as its business model -- a legal one. This, especially, since the PMA is often scolded as a habitat for the bourgeoisie, for the haves and the have mores.

The legal issue? We -- the citizens of Philadelphia -- own the building that houses the PMA.

A similar founding charter governs the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Thus, the reason that the Met is free -- well, almost. Pay what you wish, but at least a penny.

The PMA hasn't been held to the Met's example. This, despite millions being poured in to the museum's coffers annually by a half dozen taxpayer-funded agencies.

At the PMA, at least, don't expect any free-will offering anytime soon. True, Timothy Rub, the museum's director, inaugurated a free admission when he served at the Cleveland Museum of Art. But so far, unless you're a member, that will be $16 per visit. Oh yeah, $14 if you're a senior.

Holding Hands?

PMA and Barnes Forge Bond

Rub, left; Gilman, right Photos: Writers Clearinghouse

to Roll Out 'Renoir Country'
By Richard Carreno
Junto Senior Staff Writer Bio

Albert Barnes must be rolling over in his grave. Make that 'roiling.'

In what has been a low-profile reconciliation, the Barnes Foundation and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, once arch enemies, thanks to Dr.Barnes animus against the PMA, have been smoking the peace pipe in recent months. No where has this fraternal inter-institutional cooperation --unthinkable during Barnes' lifetime -- been so evident as during the PMA's current Pierre-Auguste Renoir exhibit, which opened last week.

Both museums have been blowing kisses, what with recently rolled out jointly sponsored tours and lectures. And even Timothy Rub, the museum's director, telling the press, in a pre-show viewing of 'Late Renoir,' how Philadelphia is really 'Renoir country,' due in large part to the Barnes Foundation's unique collection, at 181 works, the largest cache of the French Impressionist anywhere.

Well, why not? Rub and Derek Gilman, the Barnes' director, were both in knickers when the wacky good doctor was fulminating at the PMA and the curatorial elite that mocked his own eclectic curatorial style -- or rather, non-style. Barnes' non-traditional presentation methods are famous or infamous, depending on one's viewpoint.

What isn't in dispute, however, is that Barnes' rage against what he perceived as a fuddy-duddy Philadelphia Establishment was never in the best interests of Philly's arts community and the world-wide constituencies of both museums. Barnes was right about the conservative, uptight Philadelphia Establishment. He was wrong though to hate and to cloister the Barnes Foundation in its Lower Merion compound as if it were a Palm Beach gated-community.

As usual with 'main-stage' shows, the PMA is offering, along with 'Late Renoir,' a series of collateral events, most held at the museum itself.

In what might be a first, however, the Museum is also sponsoring a cooperative venture with the Barnes, including a private, guided tour of the foundation's collection. The tours will be for groups of 15 to 50, on Tuesdays, and will also include a private, guided tour of 'Late Renoir' and lunch at the museum. Total per person cost varies at $140, without museum transport to the Barnes, or $164, with transport.

The Barnes itself is also sponsoring its own Tuesday afternoon tours in 'celebration' of the PMA show. (Did I hear 'celebration'? Take that, Al!) Tours are priced at $75 person, or $65 for a member.

Martha Lucy, an associate curator, will also lecture on Barnes 'obsession' with Renoir at 6:30 pm, Thurday, July 29. The lecture is titled 'A Collector's Obsession: Dr. Barnes and Renoir.' (Lucy has been talkative. Last month, she offered another Renoir and PMA-related lecture, 'Barnes, Late Renoir, and the Modernist Canon.'

How far can this hand-holding go? The PMA is also offering Barnes members $2 off the regular $24 'Late Renoir' fee.

This cooperation is good news. And will probably grow stronger once the Barnes moves to its new home next year on Museum Mile.