B E B E R E

Tragedy.

The Barnes was a wonderfully quirky gem of a museum located just outside of Philadelphia and was often the highlight of my visits there. I am very sad to see it go, but not that surprised, to be honest. It seems that some Philadelphia curatorial types have wanted to get their hands on these works for some time, even at the expense of destroying what made this place so magic for me and many others: Barnes's arrangement of the works.

Given how Barnes felt about museums in general, I find the judge's ruling in this matter to be a fair bit disturbing, as it seems that these sorts of after death arrangements can be broken if they are no longer viewed as convenient to the recipients. There have been a fair number of these wranglings going on lately, but more with universities attempting to change terms of conditional gifts left to them.

Opinionjournal has been tracking this story for a while.

Ann Althouse mentions this "great move for the common people."

Here's a little appreciation I wrote on the foundation a year or so ago, when I first heard of these proceedings.

(Welcome, folks visiting from Althouse. Thank you, Ann, for linking to me.)

***

Althouse has two more articles on this from the NYT. Myself, I still am inclined to think that this has less to do with "populism" and more to do with the Arts/Curatorial Establishment's winning out over the wishes of an outsider with an opposing vision.