The Art of the Steal

Don Argott's fervent, fact-packed documentary chronicles the decades-long battle over control of the Barnes Foundation, a private collection of impressionist, post-impressionist, and early modern art worth more than $25 billion. A strong-willed, rags-to-riches iconoclast, Albert C. Barnes invented a medicine to treat gonorrhea and spent his resulting fortune on Renoirs, Cézannes, Matisses, Picassos, Monets, Seurats, Modiglianis, and Van Goghs at a time when establishment organizations such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art were not buying these works. Barnes kept his treasures in an arboretum in Merion (a Philadelphia suburb), where serious students could study them, and his will gave control over the collection (although specifying that it remain in Merion) to Missouri's historically black Lincoln University. After Barnes died in 1951, a powerful group of philanthropists and politicians aiming to use the masterworks to attract more tourists to downtown Philadelphia decided to flaunt Barnes' wishes, and so began the highbrow brawl that continues to this day, with a group called Friends of the Barnes going to court to stop the scheduled 2012 transfer of the collection to a new locale. Argott combines interviews, home movies, photos, and TV reports to illustrate what he characterizes as “the greatest act of artistic vandalism since World War II.” Although a resolutely partisan documentary, this suspenseful tale evolves like a crime thriller. Recommended. (S. Granger)