Art of the Steal a Spellbinding Crime
The Barnes Foundation was created in 1922 by Dr. Albert C. Barnes, the eccentric collector and scholar putting down stakes in the Lower Merion, Pennsylvania, just five miles outside of the Philadelphia city limits. Inside its doors the foundation was a scholarly enterprise housing an astonishing collection of Post-Impressionistic and early Modern Art, Barnes placing his scholastic institution far outside of the arms of the cultural elite he openly disdained.
Dr. Albert C. Barnes in IFC Films' The Art of the Steal
In 1951 Barnes died in a car accident, but the foundation he established was thankfully safe due to an iron-clad Trust he was positive could never be broken by the Philadelphia establishment who openly wanted his treasure trove of artistic works. Fifty years later that Trust was broken thanks to the very cultural establishment the doctor scorned in large part thanks to the now $25-billion value of his collection.
The Art of the Steal is the story of Dr. Barnes, his foundation and how Philadelphia was able to pull off one of the biggest apparently legal swindles of this young century. It is a fascinating behind the scenes account of how corporate interest can come in nonprofit guise and how political will can easily waver when billions and billions of dollars are there for the taking. At its heart, however, it is about how easy it is to destroy and how difficult it is to create, the city of Philadelphia, one the birthplaces of American democracy, the ringleader destroying one of this country’s greatest cultural monuments almost no one outside of the art world had ever even heard about.
Paint me as one of those who had never heard of the Barnes Foundation or its astonishing collection of artistic works, but thanks to director Don Argott it is certainly now an institution I’m going to be hard-pressed to ever forget. His level of detail here is extraordinary, the collection of interviews he has assembled coming from virtually every corner and side of the story. From former foundation scholars, teachers and Presidents, to current and former members of the Pennsylvania political establishment, to residents of the Lower Merion neighborhood, to journalists who make their living covering the art world, Argott has managed to cover just about all his bases. Only the nonprofits most responsible for ultimately forcing through the breaking of Barnes’ Trust refuse to participant, their absence speaking volumes making them seem even more culpable than maybe they actually are.
It’s a tangled web spinning so far out of control if it were fiction no one would ever have believed it to be possible, die hard conspiracy theorists likely to find the scenario too outlandish even for them. There are so many twists and turns here, so many places this story goes, it almost boggles the mind that Argott got so many to try and talk about it all with a straight face. Villains, like former Barnes Foundation president Richard H. Glanton suddenly morph into prescient heroes, while Governor of Pennsylvania Edward G. Rendell ends up digging his linguistic grave even as he proudly thinks the otherwise.
I do wish Argott could have gotten members of the Pew Foundation to go on the record about their efforts to uproot the Barnes Foundation and move it to Philadelphia but at the same time it’s understandable why they’d rather stay silent. It also would have been great had the judge who ultimately ruled twice in favor of the move, despite ample evidence showing he was mislead by those who originally brought the case to his courtroom, but again I can see why he’d rather not go on the record about what it ultimately was the led him to make the decisions that he did. I also think the filmmaker does veer every now and then into Michael Moore territory, and while he’s not front and center like he always is his point of view and personal bias in regards to the case isn’t exactly something he attempts to hide.
But who am I kidding? The Art of the Steal is a sensational documentary and an even better entertainment, Arogtt’s film clicking like a piece of Errol Morris-style documentary journalism that gets more and more compelling as it goes along. It’s sad reminder that money and power still go hand in hand, those with the most of it willing to go so far as destroy a man’s final will and testament just so they can get a little bit more.
Film Rating: êêê1/2 (out of 4)
