Barnes funds top $200 million

The Barnes Foundation, home of a priceless collection of impressionist and early modernist art, announced Tuesday - five days before closing the doors of its longtime Merion galleries - that it had surpassed its $200 million fund-raising goal for construction of a new facility on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia.

The foundation, which has struggled financially in Merion and was heading for bankruptcy at the turn of the 21st century, also reported rapid growth in museum membership, from 400 two years ago to more than 10,000 today.

"Surpassing our initial fund-raising mark and attracting thousands of members clearly demonstrate enthusiasm for the Barnes Foundation's compelling vision of access and openness," Bernard C. Watson, chairman of the board of trustees, said in a statement.

The announcement means that about $40 million in new donations has been booked since ground was broken on the Parkway in late 2009.

Derek Gillman, Barnes director and president, declined to name the sources of new donations, although he said all recent donors had been private; no additional public funding contributed to the total. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania contributed almost 25 percent of the total of $200 million.

Gillman also declined to discuss what will happen with the artwork in the year between closure of the Merion site Sunday and the opening of the Philadelphia building, designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects of New York, late next spring.

"The news today is about this [financial] goal," he said.

He said the funds represented "a very broad base of support" beyond public money. Names will be released, "but not today," he said, adding, "We have over six gifts of more than $10 million and we are still fund-raising."

The largest contributor to the building fund is the state, which has provided more than $47 million in capital redevelopment bond money.

Previously reported major donors include the Annenberg Foundation ($30 million), Pew Charitable Trusts ($20 million), Marguerite and H.F. "Gerry" Lenfest ($15 million), the Neubauer Family Foundation ($10 million), and the William Penn Foundation ($10 million).

In addition, according to documents obtained by The Inquirer, eight donors gave between $1.5 million and $9.9 million: Comcast Foundation and Comcast Corp., the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Dorrance H. Hamilton, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, PNC Corp., Aileen and Brian Roberts, the Wells Fargo Foundation, and an anonymous donor.

An additional 24 gifts ranging from $500,000 to $1.49 million have been received, and 34 donors contributed between $25,000 and $499,999, according to the documents.

Gillman declined to confirm or identify any donors and did not say whether any previously named donors chipped in additional funds to push the capital campaign past the $200 million mark.

Of that $200 million, $150 million will go to construction of the Philadelphia building and associated costs, and $50 million to the foundation's endowment.

"The Barnes has long been handicapped by the lack of an adequate endowment, and this initial endowment is a critical step forward," Gillman said in a statement.

By comparison, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, roughly the same size as the Barnes, has a $115 million endowment; the endowment of New York's Frick Collection stood at about $248 million in 2009.

Founded in 1922 by wealthy patent-medicine maker and art collector Albert Barnes, the foundation is located in a Paul Cret-designed building just across City Avenue in Montgomery County. In the last 20 years, thanks largely to operating restrictions crafted by Barnes and embedded in the foundation's governing trust indenture, the foundation has more closely resembled a TV soap opera set than the sober gallery and art-education facility its founder envisioned.

Barnes, who died in 1951, imposed crippling restrictions on endowment investments, attendance, fees, and use of the gallery artworks. During the 1990s, controversies broke out regularly over everything from a proposal to sell paintings, to construction of a visitor parking lot, to the holding of fund-raising events in the galleries and the launching of a world tour of selected paintings.

By 2000, the foundation announced it was virtually broke. Board chairman Watson approached several large area foundations for help and a plan emerged to move the gallery to a new, more accessible facility in Philadelphia. Three large philanthropies - the Pew Trusts, and the Annenberg and Lenfest Foundations - backed the plan.

In 2004, Montgomery County Orphans' Court approved the move, sparking more lawsuits, which were eventually dismissed. Another round of litigation brought by tenacious opponents of the move is now before the court, with a hearing set for Aug. 1.

Meanwhile, the gallery building in Merion will close permanently on Sunday in preparation for the move.

On Tuesday, Barnes officials declined to discuss what's in store between Sunday's closing and the opening of the Philadelphia building late next spring.

It's hardly a secret, however. Many of the foundation's paintings are in need of conservation, a process that is already under way. The Merion complex houses a conservation lab, although it is not certain if the Barnes is treating its own works there.

Then there is the matter of moving the incomparable collection eight or so miles to its new home. Officials are utterly mute about that, citing security concerns.

The paintings can't move, however, until the Parkway galleries are complete and have had time to "cure," a standard practice with new museum buildings.

According to past conversation with Barnes construction managers, the Philadelphia building will be effectively completed before the end of 2011. It will then take a few months to fine-tune the heating and cooling equipment to ensure a stable environment for fragile works by the likes of Renoir, Modigliani, and Soutine.

When the new facility opens, the Merion property will be devoted to education, conservation, archival work, and operations of the Barnes arboretum and related educational programs.

Tickets for the final days in Merion are sold out.