Barnes Foundation Headed For More Litigation

Seems like the saga of the Barnes Foundation, a venerable institution in the art world, isn;t over quite yet. Three years ago a Pennsylvania state coirt judge gave the institution, which has been on financial life support, permission to move from its location in the Philadelphia suburbs to new, as yet to be constructed quarters, in Center City Philadelphia. Today comes the news that a group of residents who are neighbors of the Barnes in its current location have filed a petition asking the court to reopen the case and reconsider its earlier ruling, and to put the Barnes into receivership. Many of the allegations in the petition, as reported by The Bulletin, are rather scandalous. If they are to be believed, the petitioners would have us believe that there has been a far reaching conspiracy, of which the participants included Governor Rendell, many prominent Philadelphia lawyers, business people and philanthropists, the board of trustees of a local university, as well as the board of the Barnes, and the CEO of Comcast, among others. The story seems more than fanciful and the petition is, I would predict, doomed to fail