On a thread many moons ago, we debated the "sanctity" of someone’s last will and testament. Once the person is gone, what’s the rationale, in the face of changed circumstances or desires, for fulfilling their wishes? I can’t find the thread (useless search engine), but I recall that I stood with those who value honoring the wishes of those who have passed because of the ramifications it can have on those of us still living if we don’t. In essence, a will is a social contract, and as soon as society stops honoring them, we’ll need a radical reconsideration of how we handle our own plans for the redistribution our worldly belongings.
The Barnes Foundation Gallery houses some of the most important artwork of the past few centuries. Somewhat outside Philadelphia, the collection and its trustees have been embroiled in a dispute about its current location, which was dictated as permanent in Barnes’ will.
The location is difficult to get to, the facilities are rife with access problems, and the installation of the artwork is quirky at best (See this image for a sense of Barnes’ affection for "salon style" hangings). And more than just that:
[T]he charter and bylaws drawn up the Barnes’s mercurial founder, Albert C. Barnes, a patent-medicine millionaire…famously stipulated that no picture in his collection could be lent, sold or even moved on the walls of the neo-Classical galleries that he had built for it in the mid-1920’s in Merion, Pa.
Barnes also restricted access to the collection’s legendary riches – 170 Renoirs, 55 Cézannes, 20 Picassos – by limiting visitors to 1,200 a week, a rule that seemed almost to heighten the collection’s cult appeal for museumgoers longing to glimpse masterpieces like Cézanne’s "Card Players" or van Gogh’s "Postman" in a quirkily intimate setting.
Now a judge has said the collection can be moved.
In a case that has riveted art lovers and trust-and-estate lawyers, a Pennsylvania judge ruled yesterday that the financially strapped Barnes Foundation could move its fabled art collection from a cozy suburb to a museum quarter in downtown Philadelphia, where more people could see it.
Judge Stanley R. Ott of the Montgomery County Orphans’ Court said the proposed move, backed by pledges of $150 million in financial support primarily from three Philadelphia-area foundations, seemed the only realistic way to save the Barnes from bankruptcy and salvage its prized legacy.
But that’s just background, my bone-to-pick…and I do have one…is with Roberta Smith*, arguably the most respected art critic of The New York Times, who offers today why she supports this decision:
Yet, while one art-world hand is wringing, maybe the other should be doing its Zen-like best to clap. The decision is a triumph of accessibility over isolation, of art over the egos of collectors and, frankly, of the urban over the suburban.
In other words, the gains may ultimately outweigh the losses. Of course, it is great to see paintings in an intimate setting that glows with the patina of time and bears the imprint of a collector’s personal vision. But it is also correct to ask whether a collector’s wishes, especially when they are restrictive, must be observed in perpetuity. The Barnes collection is not the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Barnes didn’t make the art; he bought it, one movable object at a time. Very few things remain the same forever, and they change largely because of human need.
I get her "art over the egos of collectors" argument. In fact, I totally agree with her later statement that "no one really owns art, that all collectors are temporary custodians. And the greater the art, the less any one person, especially a dead one, can control its destiny," but she seems to be missing a central point here, IMO.
If the argument in favor of moving the collection is based in part on the facts that the individual pieces in Barnes’ collection are "moveable" and Barnes himself did not create the work, taken to their logical conclusion those same facts would argue for breaking up the collection altogether. In other words, the vision Barnes attempted to perpetuate was not only that of the individual and varied artists he collected, but also his own, and that vision included the setting in which he worked many years to "perfect" every aspect of the viewers’ experience:
By 1929, Barnes had sold his company and devoted himself full-time to the Foundation and collecting art of all types. He chose and arranged the works in "wall ensembles" in the Gallery to illustrate for the Foundation’s students the visual elements and aesthetic traditions he felt were evident in all art forms across periods and cultures. For the rest of his life, Dr. Barnes worked relentlessly to expand his collection and further the educational work of the Foundation.
[…]In 1940, Barnes purchased an 18th century farmhouse in Chester County, Pennsylvania, which he named "Ker-Feal," or, "House of Fidèle," after his favorite dog. He added onto the house while maintaining the original center section, and filled the house with antique furniture, ceramics, and other objects. While the Barneses used the house as a weekend retreat, Ker-Feal was always meant to also be used, as Barnes stated in his will, as "a living museum of art and … a botanical garden both to be used as part of the educational purposes of The Barnes Foundation in both the art and horticulture programs."
My point here is that if the only thing binding the paintings by different artists together is the fact that one man collected them, and the only reason he lent his good name to the collection is because he had this apparently obsessive desire to have these works reflect his personal insights and tastes, should the core of his vision be dismantled, isn’t it pouring salt in the wound to continue to associate his name with it? You can argue that no one gets hurt, and it’s a tribute to the man to continue to call the relocated collection after him, but it’s no longer his vision and were he alive, I suspect he’d not want it named after him. In other words, the argument Smith makes that the individual works are greater than one man’s ego does not extend to the use of that same man’s name.
Seriously, I consider it an insult to Barnes the man to continue to associate his name with the collection. Its new location has nothing to do with his vision or name. If you break away part of his vision, the entire thing disintegrates. Each piece may as well be put up for auction and scattered to museums in the four corners of the world. Barnes’ vision was the total sum of the parts he spent his live putting together, including the setting. If the contemporary world no longer has any use for his vision, it should own up to that decision and disassociate Barnes’ name from the collection.
*I know Roberta, and will have a similar discussion with her next time she visits my gallery, but I hesitate to take her on too directly via a letter to the editor, considering 1) I have no personal interest in the Barnes (never been there), and 2) she can squash my gallery like a bug. Let’s hope she doesn’t read blogs in her spare time.
I am very saddened by this decision. The Barnes is a beautiful collection in a wonderful setting. Whatever does she mean about inaccessible, you would think the museum was in Cambodia rather than on the Mainline in Philadelphia. Visit this collection before it moves Edward, it’s a treat and this in my opinion is the way to view it. PS. I’m a fan of quirky.
I agree Wilfred. In my opinion, as a small-time collector myself, seeing the collection as Barnes wanted it to be seen is important. I’m gonna try to make it there before the move.
It’s really rather insulting to all collectors, implying that the act of collecting requires no artistic decisions.
as soon as society stops honoring them, we’ll need a radical reconsideration of how we handle our own plans for the redistribution our worldly belongings.
Well, the problem in this case is that the belongings were redistributed with strings attached. If we stipulated that wills could only transfer ownership in full, then this problem would go away. So the real question is, should society honor a person’s wish to exercise control over his/her belongings after death?
So the real question is, should society honor a person’s wish to exercise control over his/her belongings after death?
I’d say yes, because while living that person made decisions, often including giving someone something they wanted, contingent on that wish being fulfilled after their death.
Think about the wealthy grandmother who finances a grandchild’s desire to travel the world in exchange for ensuring her collection of dolls remain intact forever in some form or other after she passes away. That agreement (money to travel now for loyal adherence to a wish later) is a contract between the two of them. If after her death the grandchild falls on hard times, can’t sell the dolls invididually, and so attempts to break up the collection, that’s a breach of contract.
The grandchild benefitted while living from agreeing to the contract, I can see no reason that grandchild isn’t morally obligated to fulfill the wish as long as he/she lives.
Collections and trusts for them are often set up with similar exchanges of promises.
Why should the trustees of Barnes’ collection have any more say over its location than he wanted them to have? If they can’t comply with his wishes, they should disband the collection altogether and leave his name out of, not continue to benefit from the prestige of supposedly fulfilling his wishes.
I can see no reason that grandchild isn’t morally obligated to fulfill the wish as long as he/she lives.
Morally obligated, yes. I’m all in favor of encouraging good-faith efforts to comply with the deceased’s wishes. But should the legatee be legally obligated?
And unless the deceased was very thorough about considering and accounting for all possible future events when drawing up the contract, there will be situations where continuing to following his/her instructions would probably not be what s/he would have wanted if still alive. In your example, what if half of the dolls are accidentally damaged or destroyed? What if the original maker of some of the dolls pleads with the grandchild to be able to buy back his/her creations for some very good reason? Etc., etc. I think the important thing is not to follow the instructions to the letter but to do one’s best to act in the way that the deceased probably would have wanted. I don’t know whether a judge should be making this determination rather than the legatee.
The collection and arrangement etc itself appears to be in a strong sense a work of art and violating the collector’s intention might be compared to going to Paris and painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa. The “value” of art is a social artifact in itself, a network of appreciation, and the best collectors and galleries were the “nodes”.
….
Non-reproducible art just disturbs me. We will never lose “Hamlet”. But I will never know what Kim Stanley was like in “Streetcar”, probably never visit Fallingwater and certainly have no idea what it would be like to live there, and all that stuff on the wall is so fragile.
….
I recognize in the room picture Cezanne’s Cardplayers, and I think the three nudes is on my hard drive. I think Seurat? Very rare and a godawful gorgeous painting. I collect jpgs, wallpaper size or bigger (without paying for them of course) and I don’t have that Gauguin (200+) or Rousseau. I want them.
You’re right of course, Ken, things can change dramatically after one’s death that make maintaining the original legal obligations actually cut across the deceased’s wishes. My example didn’t account for that. I guess I see the Barnes Foundation trustees, like the grandchild selling the doll collection, putting their own interests ahead of the deceased’s.
I understand they feel the foundation will go bankrupt if they don’t move, but I can’t see the logic behind continuing to call it after a man who insisted it be experienced the way he assembled it.
The collection and arrangement etc itself appears to be in a strong sense a work of art and violating the collector’s intention might be compared to going to Paris and painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa.
I agree with the first part of this, but think a better example for the second part is the practice of taking wall panels with frescos from churches and putting them in museums. At a certain point (if the church is going to collapse) this makes sense. To be really true to the original version however, it’s better not to break up the panels and distribute them among various museums, but to reinstall them, as best as possible, in the museum in a way that gives the viewer an experience as close to the artist’s intent as they can.
I can’t see the logic behind continuing to call it after a man who insisted it be experienced the way he assembled it.
I definitely agree with you there — it’s no longer his vision, so it shouldn’t have his name. I guess the new name should be “the collection formerly known as the Barnes”.
I guess the new name should be “the collection formerly known as the Barnes”.
Or maybe just a symbol, like “¤µ§”
Ok checked my stuff, and I do have the Seurat “Les Poseuses” . Not a great scan, tho. I also have the Gauguin “Loulou” which captured my eye. The economics and ethics of my hobby…questions for Edward. There is a gallery in Provincetown that scanned their catalog in high-res and put it online(tho certainly not for my benefit). Most don’t. Some museums seek an income stream from online catalogs. I presume the Barnes stuff I have is “pirated” from catalogs or books, since I saw little on their site.
Is the scanning and uploading very expensive? Are paintings scanned, or just photographed? Even worse than music, it is hard on the Web to know if I am dealing with copyrighted, protected images. Am I committing a venial, or a cardinal sin? Do you care about the subject at all?
Bob,
I care about how those images are used. I’ve had images of my artists poached from my gallery’s website and it totally depends on whether they’re used for a commercial purpose or not.
There’s a legal disclaimer on my site explaining the images copyrighted by the individual artists, so anyone willfully taking them and using them for commercial gain is, in my opinion, breaking the law. (von? is that the case?)_
I’ve actually had to speak to websites that have poached those images and ask them to credit the source, but again, only those who are trying to make money off them.
Personally, I feel any images download for personal use (including blogging, within reason…not if the blog is a revenue-generating venture) are fine and, more than that, somewhat flattering to the artists.
P.S. I have a Vermeer as the wallpaper on my computer currently, which I greatly enjoy, but I don’t intend to try and repurpose it for commercial gain.
“Whatever does she mean about inaccessible, you would think the museum was in Cambodia rather than on the Mainline in Philadelphia.”
Barnes is only open to visitors (other than students in its courses) 3 days a week, with a low maximum per day (I think 400). As a result, it is very difficult to see the collection, especially if you do not want to take off a weekday. The property also has a very limited parking lot, and one of the disputes with the neighbors was over expanding it.
“I presume the Barnes stuff I have is “pirated” from catalogs or books, since I saw little on their site.”
The Barnes Foundation put some of its items on a worldwide tour about 10 years ago, with stops in Japan, Paris and at the Philadelphia Art Museum, while they upgraded the building (installing central air to replace window units, etc.). I recall a New Yorker cartoon from that time, with a Hamptons dweller saying to another “Cezanne is my favorite painter, but who wants to travel all the to Philadelphia to see him”.
It is likely your stuff was sold then.
I made the reservation to see the Barnes about 3 weeks in advance and it was a breeze. I have heard there are a few very busy months of the year there but for me visiting and parking was no problem and i visited on a weekend earlier this year.
The question of the copyright on a scanning/photograph of a painting is a bit tricky.
The copyright on any painting painted in 1928 or earlier has now expired. So having a scan of anything by, say, Rembrandt, is perfectly legal. However…
I know in the case of public domain books, you can copyright your particular arrangement of that book (Alice in Wonderland printed in this font with these page breaks and this set of illustrations), preventing people simply printing an exact reproduction of your public domain reprint.
I’m not sure how this applies to art, whether it means I could paint my own Rembrandt copy, but I couldn’t copy someone’s photograph of the Rembrandt or what.
John,
I believe that the museum owning a given Rembrandt still controls the copyright. I know you must pay them to reproduce an image in their collection anyway, that is if they let you.
e
How This Came To Be…Or The Rest Of The Story
Some really excellent comments on this thread. I have had the same thoughts that Bob expresses so well wrt non-reproducible art but have never been able to formulate them well. I have been to the Barnes and agree that the setting is important to my experience of the art there — indeed maybe moreso than at any other American art museum I have been to. (The only other art museum that comes to mind where setting was as important, was the Rodin collection in Paris.)
Edward, I did not realize you owned an art gallery in Manhattan — where is it?
Edward, I did not realize you owned an art gallery in Manhattan — where is it?
Jeremy,
It’s currently in Williamsburg, but I’m looking to relocate…not sure where yet.
I’ve not wanted to name it, per se, so as to avoid mixing my writings here with inadvertent marketing efforts (in other words, I kind of need the separation of hats).
Jadegold, from that link:
“In my mind, I don’t think that’s an obstacle,”Perelman said. “Accommodations could be worked out. I think if Barnes were alive today, he’d come to realize all this.
“Anyway, you can’t rule from the grave.”
That last sentiment is what Sartre referred to as the superiority of live dogs to a dead lion, and summarizes nicely why I find this whole thing disrespectful.
I actually know someone on the board at the Barnes and will be meeting with him this weekend about another matter. According to past conversations with him, the situation was at an impasse; Barnes’s stipulations were so restrictive as to prevent the musuem from making any money. Barnes was against professional curators or art historians, except when they were African-American. These were all provisions in his will. My understanding is that the Barnes trust has a massive deficit, one that can only be eased by either capital investment or a buy-out. According to my source, the Barnes collection is not just what one has seen at the museum; apparently there is a massive collection of native american art lurking in the basement, a collection which would never get seen under current conditions. (If you are clever enough to guess who my source is, please keep it under your hat.) Again, according to my source, the neighbor situation has gotten out of control: the museum is in a residential neighborhood, sure, but the millionaire neighbors have managed via the local board to prohibit even the sale of tickets at the site, so alarmed are they about the commercialization of their community. Yet according to the will, no move is possible.
I dunno. I have a lot of respect for keeping collection intact, but the conditions that Barnes laid down go close to if not over the line. If you want, I’ll pump my source this weekend. And Edward, I wouldn’t be so chary of admitting your gallery’s affiliation. I’d steer my well-lined friend towards it if I could.
Thanks for the offer Jackmormon, I might make it public after the pending move (won’t have much choice actually…that’s a hint).
Regarding the Barnes move. Clearly he was too restrictive and short-sighted, and he should have written into his will what was appropriate should his desires no longer be maintainable (his ego raging here, obviously), but the time he took after retiring to see to all the details deserves as much consideration in my opinion as the individual works. Everything your source is saying stems from presumptions that keeping the collection intact was Barnes’ highest priority. I don’t think it was. I think his own vision was his highest priority. The arrangement and setting were Barnes’ art, and it may not hold a candle to the Cezanne’s or Picassos, but it shouldn’t’ be treated as if it were not art either.
The Times editorial yesterday noted that “The arrangement of the present museum galleries will be recreated,” which, if true, is at least better than the Roberta Smith article had led to me believe was the plan.
The doctrine of cy pres, well-established in trust and estate law, permits judges to amend instruments that have become self-destructive. If the choice comes to dissolving the Barnes Foundation or selling its assets to pay bills – again, quite legal; just because the Foundation was created as part of a will doesn’t grant it existential superiority – or relocating its rooms, the latter would seem to honor the trustor better.
Beyond that, I do not believe that the dead should control the display of artworks in any way. I would break up the Frick (and replace the works with copies), and relieve the Met of the Lehman wing. (The Met ought to be able to group its considerable Netherlandish holdings all together, much as the André Meyer Gallery permits it to present Impressionist art coherently. Instead, the Met recently had to have a special exhibition just to bring together all of its Netherlandish work, including the great Campin Altarpiece from the Cloisters. Silly.
A genuine radical, I believe that while the rights to residuals and other monetary inflows ought to be heritable, the right to control (publish, adapt, &c) should be extinguished with a creator’s death.
I do not believe that the dead should control the display of artworks in any way.
If the Met et al. agree, they should tell potential donors that BEFORE they die. Otherwise this suggests it’s ok to agree to whatever will secure the donation while the collector is living because their wishes are ignorable once they’ve gone. Most major collections have more than one possible museum they could end up in…museums promise all kinds of things to those collectors in order to secure the collections, often appealing to the very ego they later berate once the donor is long gone. It’s hypocritical and disrespectful.
Non-reproducible art just disturbs me.
Which is, ironically, one of the reasons I support abandonware…
Edward: I think the thing is that donors need to be a little less egotistical about their collections.
We can agree, I think, that if an art collector left instructions in their will that their collection should be destroyed after their death to prevent anyone else from enjoying it, this is an untenable instruction that ought not to be honored: even if (to prevent the collector from setting out to destroy their collection before they die) their heirs assured them that it would be honored.
Within reason, yes, an art collector who leaves a bequest ought to have the terms of their request honored. But not to the point of preventing others from viewing their collection. A museum that can’t fulfil the terms of a bequest ought to refuse it – or, if they’re told about the bequest while the collector is still alive, try to modify the terms: but a museum that becomes unable to fulfil the terms of a bequest? How long after a person’s death ought they to have the right to control works of art that they bought? I don’t think the answer is “forever”.
Edward: I think the thing is that donors need to be a little less egotistical about their collections.
There’s a great book about the art dealer Joseph Duveen that illustrates why this is a bit of a misnomer. It’s not just the collectors’ fault here. Essentially, Duveen was instrumental in building the collections of, to name a few, Henry Clay Frick, William Randolph Hearst, Henry E. Huntington, Samuel H. Kress, Andrew Mellon, John D. Rockefeller, and Joseph E. Widener. Most of these collections are now full museums themselves or form the basis of a major museum.
Duveen played each of these great men like the proverbial fiddle. Joining forces with the totally brilliant art historian Bernard Berenson, Duveen convinced these masters of industry that the only acheivement still beyond their reach was “immortality.” That by amassing collections of mankind’s greatest achievements in the arts, and then lending their names to them, they would live on, like gods, in the imaginations of generations to come. Others also played on the conscious of these “robber barons” (getting them to buy their way into heaven or forgiveness or whatever through so many philantropical endeavors) but Duveen appealed directly to their egos. Encouraging them to begin to think of their collections, if not themselves, as immortal. With all this encouragement, and especially the goading that this collection will represent their greatness for all eternity, it’s understandable to me that these collectors set down what they thought would be permanent instructions. After all, they were not used to anyone telling them how to do things.
Museums and power dealers have not strayed much from Duveen’s model in subsequent years, as far as I can tell, but they don’t mind complaining after the fact that a collector (who thought he was buying immortality) saddled them with “permanent” instructions.
None of which is to say the method is right. But the collectors deserve better understanding in my opinion.
Coming late as usual, but still it seems to me that most of the discussion ignores the one major fact in this case. The museum was going to go belly up, bankrupt, if something major wasn’t done and done soon. In other words it could not stay and function they way it had been and continue to exist.
In otherwards it had to change somehow, someway.
The museum was going to go belly up, bankrupt, if something major wasn’t done and done soon.
Then the trustees should have declared the vision a failure, disbanded, sold off the works, etc. etc.
What they’re doing instead is making a mockery of the vision. I know they’re charged with trying to do what’s best for the actual works, in addition to Barnes’ vision, and I know there would be outrage should they have decided to break the collection up, but it’s a more honest course of action in my opinion. It acknowledges that the vision was impossible to perpetuate. At the very least, I hope they change the name once they move it. It’s not Barnes’ vision any longer.
I don’t understand this at all, Edward – and you have certainly explained your POV in enough detail that I should.
Breaking up Barnes collection and selling it off piecemeal would be fine: keeping the collection entire, but displaying it elsewhere is “mockery”?
I’ve been a bit vague, I know.
It’s Barnes’ “art” (his arrangments, setting, total experience) I’m defending here and taking an extreme position on to make my point.
He retired early and then devoted decades to getting it just the way he thought it revealed the most through juxtapositions, spacing, etc. etc. And the real insult is not keeping the collection together, but continuing to use Barnes’ name as if this new location had his blessing or had anything to do with his carefully created vision.
I’ll go back the my earlier example of the church that’s about to collapse to explain better (hopefully). It’s preferable to take the frescos and re-install them in one gallery so the viewer gets as close as possible to the intended experience, but it’s ludicrous to call the gallery “St. So-and-So Cathedral.” A reference to it, yes, but the gallery is not the church, and the new location of the Barnes collection will not be “the Barnes”…that total vision, like the church, is being torn down.
In the end, the judge has spoken, the foundation is moving the works, etc. etc, but the vision is lost. They should acknowledge that. They owe it to the artist: Barnes.
Edward: I’ll go back the my earlier example of the church that’s about to collapse to explain better (hopefully). It’s preferable to take the frescos and re-install them in one gallery so the viewer gets as close as possible to the intended experience, but it’s ludicrous to call the gallery “St. So-and-So Cathedral.” A reference to it, yes, but the gallery is not the church, and the new location of the Barnes collection will not be “the Barnes”…that total vision, like the church, is being torn down.
Ah! That I understand. Okay.
I still don’t agree – but I see what you mean.
Duveen is tremendous fun. It has received qualified
reviews because Meryl Secrest doesn’t penetrate Duveen’s carefully-maintained
persona. But I suspect that Duveen himself did very little navel-gazing, and the
roll-call of big names, big fortunes, and top-ten masterpieces makes for almost
giddy reading.
Edward, my ideas about the ownership of artworks that are over
a century old are deeply radical, and I don’t want to bore you and
everyone else with them here. Suffice it to say that when I come across a
wonderful picture that’s in a "Private Collection" – Chardin’s incomparable
Raspberries is an example – I want to burst. How can private owners
guarantee the safety of such objects to the extent that great museums can? And
while I don’t have a beef with inherited wealth, I want to keep it liquid.
As to Barnes’s "art," I’m afraid that I rather put that
under the heading of statues, as in the legal unenforceability of a testamentary
provision calling upon executors to erect a statue of the deceased.