A compelling polemic by Philly-based Don Argott, The Art of the Steal looks at the bitter, decades-long fight over the Barnes Foundation and its singular, $25-billion-dollar art collection.
Created in 1922 by Albert C. Barnes, an early 20th-century industrialist and voracious art collector whose bio reads like Horatio Alger, the Barnes Foundation made its Merion, Pennsylvania home a mecca for aesthetes, with eyefuls of brand-name paintings (i.e. 181 Renoirs, 69 Cézannes, 59 Matisses, 46 Picassos) and only-here ephemera such as Native American ceramics. Barnes passed away in 1951, but his will declared that the works never be loaned, moved, or sold — that is until a few powerful figures in Philly saw the dollar signs in the impressionistic swirls.
Argott employs gabbing partisans, graphics, and archival footage to present a case that continues to open fault lines in the art world.
