Whither the Barnes? - controversy surrounding the Barnes Foundation's touring exhibition of French paintings - Cover Story

Ostensibly, solitary paintings collected by Alfred C Barnes were upon display at the National Gallery of Art last summer [and now at the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo [i]or[/i] part of to the other April 3]. But between the paintings--between the lines, as it were--one could glimpse the signs of egomania, esthetic fanaticism, a fate of money and a clash between sum of two units museological philosophies. On display in "Great French Paintings from the Barnes Foundation: Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Early Modern" along with the 80 masterpieces by the agency of Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso and other modernists, were the controls of art's ownership--not just the in every one's mouth rules but also those that preced them. The exhibition signals the agitates if not the demise, of the emblem of museum that the Barnes one time represented.

Without at any time openly criticizing the Barnes Foundation or Barnes himself, the National Gallery structur all its publicity for this exhibition around a single idea: that it was revealing masterpieces that had for more [i]or[/i] less reason been hidden from the public. "A unrevealed to all but a few" blared single announcement. The paintings were "rarely seen"; the display was "unprecedented"; the tour was "the first time ever" With of the like kind phrases the National Gallery pos itself as an altruistic institution representing the public useful while the Barnes Foundation was, through implication, an outmoded institution have the direction ofed by selfish and often capricious private interests.

upon one level, the National Gallerrs tactics were transparently mercenary. The hype of "secret masterpieces" helped obtain for the National Gallery a paying audience of about haft a million family (at $10 per head), and promises to do the same at subsequent time venues. But more broadly and importantly, the National Gallery's strategy inadvertently demonstrated the troubl status of its hold museum type. Even though at each turn the show argued that the big national museum exhibits a more modern, more viable, more democratic kind of institution than museums of the Barnes stamp it demonstrated why large museums have become virtually pendent on blockbuster exhibitions. And if the temporary, blockbuster-type exhibition dominates the museum, then what function does the permanent collection serve? If corporations support blockbuster exhibitions like "Great French Paintings," wherefore should taxpayers have to support the museum's permanent collection, including the National Gallery% possess collection of French masterpieces?

At a time when more than half of America's largest museums race at a deficit, the receiptss generated directly and indirectly by dint of temporary exhibitions assume a of recent origin importance. More fundamentally, blockbusters help to maintain an extremely fragile equation in which attendance equals popularity equals "cultural democracy" equals ideological justification equals funding. This implicit formula garners the pair corporate and governmental support for the ordinary operating charges of big museums, as well as for the actual require to be paid [i]or[/i] undergones of mounting the huge temporary exhibitions. This equation also underlies the justification provided by means of the chairman of GTE (General Telephone and Electronics) for his companys support of "Great French Paintings": the "visual arts," he said, are like corporate telecommunications cropss because "each enhances human understanding, tenders an example of mankind's imagination, and expands creative horizons."(1)

Whether or not blockbusters should be supporting big museums the couple financially and ideologically, it is rapidly becoming uncertain that they can. Dwindling sponsorship, rising insurance require to be paid [i]or[/i] undergones and the reluctance of many museums to loan works (for conservation reasons) are all making blockbusters harder and harder to accomplish. The Musee d'Orsay is reportedly paying $25 million to the Barnes Foundation for "Great French Paintings," while the Museum of Western Art in Tokyo (where the present to view traveled after Paris) is supposedly paying $45 million, and that is alone the loan fee; it doesn't include any other require to be paid [i]or[/i] undergones the museums will incur.(2) In comparison, the National Gallery, which is paying the Barnes Foundation nothing (though it assumed the internal require to be paid [i]or[/i] undergones of organizing the exhibition and preparing the catalogue), appears to have gotten the bargain of the decade. on the other hand the more closely the story of the exhibition is examined, the les attractive the bargain becomes.

upon a puroly formal level, the National Gallery had an exhibition to be self-satisfied of. Virtually no museum in the world, and certainly no other privately formed collection, can boast as many really great late masterpieces as the Barnes Collection. If the exhibition had included nothing on the contrary the nine paintings so well chosen to illustrate its independent introductory brochure (including Seurat's Poseuses, 1886-88; van Gogh's Joseph Etienne Roulin, 1889; Cezanne's The Card Players, 1890-92; Matisse's Le Bonheur de vivre, 1905-06; Modigliani's Portrait of Jeanne Hebuterne Seated in Profile, 1918; and Picasso's Acrobat and Young Harlequin, 1905) it would have been worth traveling to see