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FeedQ&A: Robert Zaller
A Barnes Foundation activist and participant in The Art of the Steal documentary
Photo by Jared Castaldi Published December 15, 2009 at 12:51 PM
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The Art of the Steal is a brash new documentary that tackles what’s become one of the Main Line’s most enduring controversies: the scheduled move of Dr. Albert C. Barnes’ private art collection from Merion to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. The film made its festival debut last fall in New York and Toronto. And while director Don Argott and producer Sheena M. Joyce—a Bryn Mawr College graduate—won’t talk locally until Steal screens here this spring, one of the film’s participants is happy to go on the record about the pending punch the film is sure to pack. Robert Zaller is a professor of history at Drexel University and a member of the steering committee of the Friends of the Barnes Foundation. He attended the New York Film Festival press showing as a roving critic for the Broad Street Review.
MLT: You’ve seen the film.
What story of the Barnes does it tell? Is there a slant one way or another?
RZ: The Art of the Steal traces the origins of the foundation from Barnes’ own humble beginnings in Philadelphia. It discusses his partnership with John Dewey in turning his art collection into a teaching instrument, and his notion of art education as a means of democratic empowerment. As the film makes clear, Barnes originally envisioned housing his collection in Philadelphia, but its utter rejection by the city art establishment understandably alienated him.
MLT: Did the Friends of the Barnes Foundation have a hand in making The Art of the Steal?
RZ: None at all. Some of us—myself included—agreed to be interviewed for it. We had no part in it otherwise, but the filmmaker concluded that the move of the Barnes was a boondoggle, pure and simple. That’s what we think, too. So do critics and reporters for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Commentary, and the London Independent. No one outside Philadelphia thinks the city is going to wind up with anything but egg on its face.
MLT: Do the Friends get any significant screen time?
RZ: The film’s last part describes the formation of the Friends of the Barnes Foundation and its unsuccessful effort, together with Montgomery County, to reopen the move in Montgomery County Orphans’ Court and the rejection of both the Friends’ and the county’s petitions by Judge Stanley R. Ott, who’d given permission for it in 2004. The reasoning behind Ott’s decision—if it can be called that—isn’t discussed.
MLT: What’s your role in the film?
RZ: I appear briefly and unmemorably, but the principal point I try to make is that, with a net value of $30 billion, the hijacking of the collection is the greatest act of art theft since World War II.
MLT: Does the film advance the Friends’ interests?
RZ: The film sets out to tell the truth, and I believe it does so. To that extent, it is helpful to those—including the Friends—who want to see the Barnes preserved in Merion, and Dr. Barnes’ vision and will honored.
MLT: Why do you suppose Don Argott and crew are being so reserved and guarded?
RZ: The distributor will make the decisions about the release. We’re assured it will take place this year. Obviously, we hope the film comes out as soon as possible. Truth shouldn't wait.
MLT: How did the Barnes collection take on such a life of its own?
RZ: On its 12-acre site in Merion, the collection became part of a larger arboreal and horticultural environment that reflected it, and that became integral to Barnes’ overall conception of aesthetic experience. As others came to recognize the significance of the collection, some began to covet it—notably Walter Annenberg, whose criminal and reactionary associations are detailed in the film. Annenberg and his paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, attempted to undermine the Barnes trust after his death, but these efforts were unsuccessful until after the death of Barnes’ close associate and collaborator, Violette de Mazia. When Richard Glanton became board chairman of the Barnes (Glanton is extensively interviewed in the film), the door was opened to Annenberg and others to jettison trust restrictions on the grounds of making the collection accessible to a wider public audience.
Reader Comments:
Bravo Robert Zaller! Well said, as usual.
Thank you for this superb interview with Robert Zaller calling for integrity and reason on the Barnes issue. State Attorney General Tom Corbett must do his job as guardian of the public trust and put an end to the plans to dismantle the Barnes Foundation. He can no longer turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to this shameful endeavor, underwritten by taxpayer money no less!