An engrossing if overheated his tory of the battle for control of a prized art collection situated in the Philadelphia suburbs, “The Art of the Steal” investigates the shadowy deal behind a $25 billion treasure.
Physician-entrepreneur Albert Barnes founded the Brookes Foundation in the 1920s and filled it with marvelous post-Impressionist masterpieces. Barnes, who severely restricted access to his collection, wanted it to remain in a wealthy suburb of Philadelphia, seemingly because he despised the city’s aristocracy. Mischievously, he bequeathed control to a small black college, Lincoln University — which, decades after his death, was short of cash to run the foundation.
A complicated deal resulted in a plan to move the art to a museum in Philadelphia in 2012. This documentary relies heavily on an echo chamber of art writers and teachers, all of whom are outraged by the proposed move, but their ad hominem snark (“Ray Perelman does not have an eye for art. He never will”) and use of derision like calling the new museum “McBarnes” are more revealing than the filmmakers suspect.
The same neighbors are shown first complaining that the Barnes collection draws too much street parking, then fighting the addition of a parking lot, then fighting yet again to keep the collection where it is, where few can see it.
Maybe the gentry and art-world snobs are less interested in the details of Barnes’ will than in preserving a fabulous secret garden, away from the grubby public. Is it really “a tragedy” that lots more people will get to see these paintings? .