Materials of the Philly Barnes (presented at Philadelphia Arts Commission meeting)
[Part 1 is here.
The video of my visit to the Barnes Foundation’s Philadelphia
construction site, showing a prototype fragment of the new facility, is
here.]
I’ve been intending to follow up on my first post (linked above) about the Philadelphia Arts Commission’s approval of the Barnes plans, and
to report on the comments that the architects made in an interview with
me after the vote was taken. But I got sidetracked by the more
immediately pressing stories that broke last week.
So I need to begin this post by saying four things:
1) Mine is not the only ArtsJournal blog on which the ad has been placed.
2) My strong opposition to the Barnes’ move to Philadelphia is well known. (Will the ad still be there tomorrow?)
3) There is a Chinese wall between AJ bloggers and the people who take in the ad money and post the ads, just as there’s a separation of church and state between a newspaper’s editorial and advertising departments in the mainstream media. (Unlike the situation at those publications, however, a large portion of the ad money goes to the writer—me.)
4) I don’t control the ads and they will not control what I write.
These kinds of conflicts are an occupational hazard of a one-woman operation. I navigate the shoals as best I can.
And now, back to our regularly scheduled blogging:
Below is Part Two of my video from the Arts Commission’s meeting. In this one, architect Tod Williams describes plans for parking and for the controversial “light box” above the courtyard that runs between the part of the facility that will contain the Barnes Collection and the entry area that will house ticketing, café, offices, shop, auditorium and temporary exhibition space.
I plan to follow up with the architects’ remarks to me about the project. Even the portion of the interior of the new Barnes that is supposed to replicate the old Barnes will, in several respects, be significantly different from what you remember.