The Art of the Steal

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(feedback and reverb)

(soft dramatic music)

(Music continues)

Well, hello everybody.

This is a fabulous day

for Philadelphia,

and we have some wonderful news

for you,

and I am so proud

to present to you

the mayor of Philadelphia,

the mayor of arts and culture,

John Street.

(applause)

- Thank you,

and good afternoon, everyone.

Now, let me see,

what kind of day am I having?

(laughter)

Um, actually it is a very,

very special moment

for all of us here

in the city of Philadelphia.

This has been--

this has been a journey,

and we're not

completely finished yet,

but let me tell you something.

It's one of those things

that will make our city special

for a long, long time.

You will not be able

to go to Houston

and see the Barnes Collection.

You won't be able

to go to Boston.

You won't be able

to go anywhere else.

If you want to see it,

you come to the city

of Philadelphia.

And so it is

with a great sense of pride

that we come here today

so that the Barnes Collection

can be moved from...

Lower Merion?

- Merion.

- From Merion...

Actually,

I pause to tell you

that I was on a bike ride

not too long ago

and rode right past the place.

And I said,

"See you soon..."

(laughter)

In the city of Philadelphia

on the Benjamin Franklin

Parkway.

(frantic piano music)

- You know, this is a story

which should have been told

as it went along.

(tape cassette clicks)

- It is the greatest act

of cultural vandalism

since World War II.

(hard rock music)

- It's been a circus.

You know, he couldn't take

the paintings

up to heaven with him--

or hell

or wherever the heck

he wound up.

(Music continues)

- The name of the game is,

if you're gonna leave

your paintings somewhere,

don't let there be

a politician

within 500 yards.

(Music continues)

- It's America's treasure to be

untainted by these attacks.

(Music continues)

- Culture has become

big business.

Culture is an industry.

There's a culture industry

that requires new product.

(Music continues)

- This is about humanity,

but you can't put

dollar signs on that.

I mean, obviously,

you destroy something fragile

when you do that.

(Music continues)

- It's an example

of something that's happening

all across the society,

and this is just one

nice little microcosm

that we can look at carefully.

(Music continues)

- No one knows this story.

This is a hidden story,

and it's a big, big scandal.

(Music continues)

This is the scandal of

the art world in modern America.

(Music continues)

(cassette clicks and whirs)

- The Barnes is one of the Iast

great personal collections

in the United States.

The fight now

is over how closely

the foundation

Barnes established

should follow Barnes's wishes.

Here were Modern paintings

so important

that they were the envy

of virtually every art museum

in the world.

(birds chirping)

- This is the treasure trove

of, uh,

the Modern art of America

and of the world.

And this is the best of the best

of the best.

- When you go through

the Barnes Collection,

it is jaw-dropping.

Your mouth falls open.

You can't believe

you're seeing this.

And then you go

in another room,

and it's more and more

and more and more.

It's just incredible.

- I had an art handler there,

and the first time she picked up

the Van Gogh Postman to move it,

she walked about three feet,

she put the painting back down

very carefully,

and she sat on a bench,

and she cried.

- They've got more Cezannes

than the entire city--

than are in the entire city

of Paris.

There's 181 Renoirs,

wall to wall.

The joy of life is always cited

in everyone's art book

because it's such

an important painting

in the history of art.

Picasso:
46.

Seven by Van Gogh.

Six by Seurat.

The Seurat Models, now,

of course, that really is

sort of a spectacular thing

that there is no equal for.

- Uh, simply the concentration

of the work

of these particular masters

is unrivaled.

The Louvre doesn't have it.

The Museum of Modern Art,

the Metropolitan Museum,

they don't have it.

- If you've been

to any other museum,

you're used to walking in

and seeing

these white walls

and these paintings hung up.

You know, it's like

a shopping experience.

- Barnes wasn't interested

in a mass experience.

He was interested

in a quality experience.

- The rooms are intimate.

They are not made

to accommodate

industrial-strength

Smithsonian-sized crowds.

- The Barnes Collection

is arranged not by period,

not by artist,

but by aesthetic values.

- You can see that a Cezanne

and a door lock

and some furniture

are all grouped together.

Well, he had a reason for this.

- It's a completely

different way

of understanding

a work of art

and one's experience

of a work of art.

- We see this collection

with a very interesting

personality stamped on it.

- The Barnes Foundation

is the single most important

American cultural monument

of the first half

of the 20th century.

- From an arts

and cultural point of view,

it is not a little place.

It's an absolutely essential,

critical,

earth-shakingly

important place.

(birds chirping)

(record needle crackling)

(projector whirring)

(brassy jazz music)

- Well, Albert Barnes

I've come to think of

as really

an extraordinary character,

because, I mean, he's--

he tends to be dismissed

as this sort of

a bizarre curmudgeon.

But in fact,

I think he's sort of--

something of a genius.

- Dr. Barnes is

a particular interest of mine

because I'm fascinated

that this working-class man

from Philadelphia

who's boxing to help pay

his university fees,

how this young man creates

one of the most

beautiful collections

of Early Modern art

in the world.

- He was a brilliant kid

who came up out of the smoke

and became very successful.

(Music continues)

- Dr. Barnes made his way into

the University of Pennsylvania

and then its medical school.

He realized

that there was a market

for a substitute

for silver nitrate,

which, at that time,

a drop or two was put

in the eyes

of almost every baby born

in America

to protect them

from venereal disease.

- # VD is for everybody #

- The product which Barnes

had come up with

was something called argyrol.

- Barnes marketed something

that solved a huge problem

and, you know,

the wealth that would

come from it--

imagine today that you had

invented, you know,

a cure for AlDS.

Glackens,

a friend from Central High,

who was an artist,

introduced Barnes to art.

Barnes, being

this curious type,

immersed himself in it

in the same way

he immersed himself

in any other objective

scientific problem.

He wanted to learn about it;

he wanted to understand it.

But here he was

in Philadelphia.

And at that rate, Philadelphia

didn't have a clue.

- The money people

who were very conservative

did not have a sense

of progress.

Barnes did.

(accordion music)

- Well, he'd started going

to Paris,

you know, trying to understand

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