Yikes! It’s GROWING! The view from the webcam of the Philly Barnes
The Barnes Foundation, which plans to close its Merion galleries on Sunday, in anticipation of its eventual move to Philadelphia, today announced (in an e-mail, not on its website) that it had raised “more than $200 million,” which, in the foundation’s words, “fulfills campaign promises to fund both the new home [my link, not theirs] for the Barnes Foundation on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and an initial endowment.”
Not exactly.
When it became clear that building costs would escalate from the initial estimate of $100 million to $150 million, the Barnes didn’t raise its capital campaign goal accordingly. Instead (as I originally reported in 2009, here), it lowered its goal for endowment from $100 million to $50 million, keeping the total campaign goal at $200 million but fudging its promise to put the place on a sound financial footing.
[CLARIFICATION: I’m now told that the preliminary endowment goal was $50 million. That was increased back in 2006 to $100 million (which, in a previous version of this post, I had mistakenly called the “initial goal”). That higher endowment goal reverted to $50 million, when building estimates rose $50 million to the current $150 million.]
The Barnes also reported today on its “extraordinary growth in its membership from 400 in July 2009 to more than 10,000.” This success may have had more to do with an urgent imperative to visit the old Barnes than with general enthusiasm for the new: The foremost membership benefit touted online was complimentary access to the Merion facility. Andrew Stewart, the Barnes’ spokesperson, told me today that he believes the membership increase occurred because “many more people are aware of the Barnes now and are excited about the new building project….As we have reached out to the community with membership mailings, through our website, and on the phones, people have responded enthusiastically.”
Critics of the move have repeatedly questioned whether a $50-million endowment would be sufficient to bankroll the Philly Barnes’ operations. Now, in an astonishing article that seems (quite literally) to give aspiring thieves a roadmap for hijacking the Barnes move, Philadelphia-based freelance writer Don Steinberg, in the Wall Street Journal, has suggested that transporting the Barnes’ precious cargo might be inadvisable because of the risk of loss or damage. Even more astonishingly, the piece is accompanied by a slideshow of “great works [that] have been lifted from museums around the world.”
One of the many errors in that piece (commenter Brian Ferguson, flagged one; the still uncorrected “Isabella Steward [sic] Gardner” is another) is the statement in the first paragraph that “the hard part is over—the near-decade of court filings seeking to
enable, or prevent, the move of a collection estimated in some quarters
to be worth as much as $25 billion.”
As CultureGrrl readers know, the legal briefs are, in fact, still flying, with oral arguments on the latest petition by those opposing the move set to be heard on Aug. 1 in Montgomery County Orphans’ Court.
In the meantime, the Barnes hopes to open its new Philadelphia digs, designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, late next spring. Construction is proceeding apace, as evidenced by the above shot from the Barnes’ webcam.
On June 10, Stewart informed me (in an e-mail responding to my queries) that “construction is moving along on time” and “construction costs are on target….The Gallery part of the building [the small rectangle to the left, seemingly engulfed and overwhelmed by the larger structure] is scheduled to be finished by August, so we can run systems through three seasons [before] opening.”
(Given what happened in winter 2007 at another Williams/Tsien art museum, that seems like a very good idea!)
If you haven’t reserved a time slot to visit the Barnes between today and Sunday, sorry, you’re out of luck: The last days for public viewing of Dr. Albert Barnes‘ Barnes are officially sold out.