Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation Can Officially Lend Its Masterpieces, Court Rules

A court has ruled that the Barnes Foundation can start lending works from its Impressionist and modern art collection to other institutions, meaning that masterpieces that have long remained in Pennsylvania can now travel freely.

Historically, the Barnes has long adhered to legalese set by the foundation’s executors stipulating that the collection should not be altered or used for loans, as would be the case for most institutions.

In a decision filed on July 21, Pennsylvania judge Melissa Sterling granted the foundation’s board of trustees legal permission to break a legal agreement between trustees that has for decades halted any changes to the Barnes collection. The Barnes’s founder, academic Albert C. Barnes, set up the museum to house his personal collection in 1922.

In a statement, the museum said that the decision aligns with Barnes’s original vision for the foundation as a teaching institution.

“Barnes envisioned the institution as a classroom,” the statement said, arguing that the museum’s ability to selectively lend works to outside exhibitions adds to its authority in the field. The museum called this “a mark of an intellectually dynamic institution.”

For decades, the Barnes’s paintings have been left largely untouched in order to comply with the collector’s posthumous plans for the foundation, which are legally binding. But now, the museum can alter the way it presents its collection.

Changes to the Barnes’s original display have been a source of ongoing dispute. Controversy ensued in 2012, when the Barnes relocated from the founder’s original estate to a new building on Benjamin Franklin Parkway in the city’s museum district. Detractors of the shift argued it violated the trustee agreement Barnes had laid out before his death.

The current policy change, which is still in its proposal phase with the museum’s board of trustees, has several limits. No more than 20 paintings can be loaned at once, and no more than two paintings from one room. Individual loans are limited to 12 months during a 24-month period. Only under select circumstances can a work be loaned for up to 15 months during a 30-month period.

In April, lawyers and advocates of the current policy change, among them Barnes officials, argued in a hearing before Judge Sterling that Barnes loaned works from his collection to outside institutions during his lifetime.

It’s not yet clear which works could end up being loaned to outside institutions. Major works in the Barnes collection include Pablo Picasso’s Acrobat and Young Harlequin (1905) and Henri Matisse’s The Dance (1932).

In the past, the museum’s leadership has parted with the restrictive policy in order to raise funds for the museum’s endowment. The former director, Richard Glanton, oversaw a temporary change to the policy that restricted loans from the Barnes in the 1990s with the aim to raise $7 million in endowment funds.

The new loan policy has attracted some pushback. Pennsylvania-based attorney Richard R. Feudale filed a motion on August 8 to dispute the July decision, but it was dismissed, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. Feudale did not respond to ARTnews‘s request for additional comment.