Barnes' Leaders Ordered Back to Court

September 19th, 2007
By Cheryl Allison
Main Line Times

Even as the Barnes Foundation announced the selection of the architect who will design its new home in Philadelphia, the judge who granted permission for a move from Merion has called the institution's leaders back to court.In a related development, Montgomery County commissioners were to file a petition in Orphan's Court on Wednesday asking Judge Stanley Ott to take a new look at the case. A group of students and neighbors opposing the move, the Friends of the Barnes Foundation, filed its own suit Aug. 27.

After a weekend meeting, the board of trustees of the Barnes Foundation announced that it had voted unanimously to hire the New York-based firm Tod Williams and Billie Tsien Architects to design a new facility for a site on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

As that long-anticipated news was breaking Monday, the attorney for the Friends of the Barnes said that Ott had taken action on its petition.

On Sept. 5, Ott issued citations to the 12 individual members of the board of trustees, to the foundation, and to state Attorney General Tom Corbett, ordering them to respond to the petition.

Ott set Oct. 5 as the date for the parties to appear in court to answer why the relief requested in the petition should not be granted. The Friends of the Barnes in their suit asked Ott to remove the board and place the foundation in court receivership.

The county's petition is also expected to seek to block the move, asking the judge to consider changed conditions since his 2004 decision altering the will of founder Dr. Albert C. Barnes to keep his priceless collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings in the gallery he built for it in Merion.

Among those changed conditions: Montgomery County's offer to purchase and lease back the Barnes' properties through a bond issue and Lower Merion Township's action to greatly increase the number of visitors permitted to tour the Merion campus.

For both the Barnes Foundation and the Friends group, the naming of an architect for a Philadelphia facility has been an important symbolic milestone in the long-running dispute over how to keep the institution alive financially while honoring Albert Barnes' intentions. To the foundation, it's a key step toward accomplishing the move. To the Friends, it was important to bring matters back to Ott's attention before the new building became more of a reality.

The firm headed by the husband and wife team of Williams and Tsien was chosen from a short list of six of the world's architectural leaders. They have designed major museum projects before, including the American Folk Art Museum in New York and an addition and renovations to the Phoenix Art Museum.

The only firm of the six to have designed a building in Philadelphia, the pair designed the critically-praised Skirkanich Bioengineering Building at the University of Pennsylvania.

"We are delighted with our decision to build a future with Tod Williams and Billie Tsien," said Aileen Roberts, a Barnes trustee and chairman of its Building Committee in a statement. "Together we will be able to create a more viable and less restrictive center for art education that retains the intimate viewing experience of the original galleries and is still the special place that people love."

For Barnes Director Derek Gillman, it was the architects' work in designing a building for the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, Calif., that convinced him Williams and Tsien were right for the Barnes' unique challenge. The institute's founder had asked them to design a building that would be a "scientific monastery," he related in an interview this week. Like other Williams and Tsien buildings, this one is "a building you can walk through easily," in a way that is coherent and clear. But, "You get as you go through always something to look at" that is unexpected and pleasing.

It's an approach that he believes will help the architects meet their mission of replicating Albert Barnes' original galleries and arrangements of artwork, while integrating elements of the new building's landscape.

Strikingly modern, even minimalist, the architects' style also is distinguished, Gillman said, by a "subtle and refined" sensitivity to textures and materials.

Gillman said the six finalists in the six-month search presented concepts and approaches, but not specific schemes for the new building. A design for the new building is expected to be completed in about a year.

In an interview Monday, Schwartz, the Friends attorney, took the naming of an architect with a grain of salt, pointing out that Philadelphia officials are still squabbling about a temporary and a permanent home for the Youth Study Center, which currently occupies the site on the parkway earmarked for the new Barnes.

Regarding Judge Ott's action on the petition, he said he thinks it is "significant that it's moving along."

"It goes to the question of their fiduciary obligations," he said, referring to the judge's request for the Barnes board members to respond. The petition asserts that it should have been the board's responsibility to seek less drastic measures than moving the art to keep the institution financially healthy.

The attorney general's office has also been asked to respond, he said. In the petition the Friends group asserts that the office should have taken a more watchful role in its capacity as a monitor of non-profit organizations in the state.

Montgomery County commissioners, who had initially retained Schwartz on the Barnes matter but later opted to have their solicitor prepare a petition to the court, were to announce the filing at a press conference at the courthouse Wednesday at 2 p.m.