May 15, 2008 4:43

Bad News About the Barnes

It looks like the judge in the court battle over moving the Barnes collection out of Merion, Pa. won't be revisiting his earlier ruling that the art could be relocated to Philadelphia.

Judge Stanley R. Ott of the Montgomery County Orphans Court, which has jurisdiction over the Barnes trust, decided today to dismiss the petitions of the Friends of the Barnes Foundation, an ad hoc group that opposes the move, and the Montgomery County Commissioners. They both wanted him to reconsider his 2004 decison in light of subsequent developments. But Ott never addressed himself to the substance of the question. He decided the case on a common threshold issue —  that the petitioners didn't have standing to bring suit in the first place.

That petition was always a very long shot. Judges don't like to be asked to reverse themselves. And it probably didn't help that the first petition submitted by the Friends' earlier attorney was a very free ranging set of accusations about the motives behind the proposed move. In his ruling, Judge Ott calls that one "a 231-paragraph diatribe, rampant with scattershot accusations, arguments and conjecture." Not long after it was filed the Friends and that attorney parted company, apparently to the judge's relief. Ott says "the real issues, as honed by current counsel [Lacayo: that would be the Friend's new lawyer] in his brief and argument, are much more manageable."

But since Ott then goes on to reject the idea that the Friends or even the County has standing to bring suit in the first place, he never has to come to grips with those issues. He did find that the Friends had made their filing in good faith and not arbitrarily, meaning they won't be assessed fees for the legal costs of the other side.

And what will this mean for the Barnes? I'll stick with what I said last year.

It simply will not be possible to "recreate" the Barnes in a much larger new building on Ben Franklin Parkway, any more than the Dulwich Picture Gallery outside London could be stuffed into the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern. In an era of big box museums, the Barnes is the ultimate jewel box. The financial problems of the Foundation are real, but the snatch-and-grab solution of relocating the collection to Philadelphia is no solution at all. It isn't salvation. It isn't even euthanasia. It's death by disembowelment.