Yesterday I visited the famed Barnes Foundation (noted for its huge Impressionist collection) but no photography is allowed.

Well, unless you're writing about the museum's controversial history for the New York Times. Then you're allowed to take photographs like this:

And then you can yell at bloggers like me who utilize them to depict That Which May Not Be Depicted.

(Actually, for those who are interested, high quality pictures of many of the Foundation's most famous paintings can be found at the Wiki entry.)

Of course, the Barnes is doomed. This "small, idiosyncratic museum" (built by an idealistic millionaire specifically to display his art collection forever) is being moved to Philadelphia. To say that it will lose its character is understatement in the extreme. This was Barnes original intent:

In order to preserve the institution's identity, Barnes set out detailed terms of its operation in an indenture of trust to be honored in perpetuity after his death. These included limiting public admission to two days a week so the school could use the art collection for student study, and prohibitions against lending works in the collection, touring the collection, and presenting touring exhibitions. Matisse is said to have hailed the school as the only sane place in America to view art.

David Nash, a Manhattan dealer who appraised the Barnes collection many times when he was director of Impressionist and modern paintings at Sotheby's, said of the ruling: "It's a terrible shame. The whole concept of the Barnes will be ruined. The installation, the building itself, was like seeing something under a glass dome. It would be as though the Frick were dismantled and put back together at the Met."

No one but an emotional blogger would dare call it looting, but that's exactly what I think it is.

According to the director of the Pew Foundation (itself long departed from its original purpose), though, the dismantling and the moving is just fine.

Ms. Rimel [Rebecca Rimel, president and chief executive of the Pew Charitable Trusts] said that "Dr. Barnes would never have imagined the constraints the foundation is currently facing." Barnes described the foundation as a place for "plain people, that is men and women who gain their livelihood by daily toil," she said. By moving the collection from an affluent suburb to downtown Philadelphia, she said, more of those "plain people" will be able to enjoy the art.

The sad and squalid story of what happened to the Barnes is detailed in a book called "Art Held Hostage" which Amazon calls a "truly American tale of power, litigiousness, and boardroom antics," and "a book for those interested in the dark underbelly of the business side of the art world." From Publisher's World: "

Anyone interested in the intersection of art, race and power politics will find this tale engrossing-and depressing.

In 1951, the endowment of the Barnes Foundation was $9 million, equivalent to about $62 million today. Corruption, bungling, greed and changing financial standards have depleted it; now, there is no endowment left. ''Art Held Hostage'' -- a morality play masquerading as a legal thriller -- tells us what went wrong. Part of the problem was Barnes's indenture, which mandated investment only in government securities; its terms were responsible for the endowment's contraction by about 80 percent (in inflation-adjusted terms). But the total depletion of the museum's coffers owes much to the interplay of racial, local and personal politics.

Not that I blame them. Were I a prominent Philadelphia booster, I'd want the art too. Years ago, he collection was conservatively estimated as being worth $6 billion (today it's more like $20 billion), and it includes 181 Renoirs, 69 Cézannes, 46 Picassos, and 59 Matisses.

The real tragedy is that Barnes himself saw the possibility of something like this happening -- and tried to avoid it:

Barnes spent virtually his whole life at war with the Philadelphia cultural establishment, believing its members more interested in money and influence than art. He'd also seen the collection of his friend and lawyer, John G. Johnson, posthumously hijacked in the 1930s when the Philadelphia Museum of Art went to court to break Johnson's will so the art could be transferred to the museum.

Thus Barnes had his lawyers draw up an airtight trust indenture to allow the Barnes to continue after his death as it had in his life: The paintings would not be lent, sold or rearranged. In addition, nearby Lincoln University, a historically black college, would gradually assume control as the original trustees died or retired.
Dr. Barnes, though, reckoned wrong. His indenture has been under legal assault for the past decade by the Barnes's own board. Alas, by 1999 legal fees for these and related battles had bankrupted the Barnes, and the newly appointed director, Kimberly Camp, found herself publicly begging for money.

You'd think the city's philanthropic and cultural elite would have been eager to help an internationally renowned institution in its own backyard. But things weren't that simple. When Ms. Camp went begging for financial support, its members said no--or gave a dribble here and a drab there. On one occasion, says Ms. Camp, she approached Raymond Perelman, the multimillionaire father of billionaire Ron Perelman, who was then board chairman of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He "stuck out his hand, and he said he'd be happy to give money, 'as soon as you give me this.' And I said: 'Give you what?' And he said: 'The keys--the keys to the Barnes.'

Once again, powerful forces within the Philadelphia art community were conspiring to take over a priceless collection.

In Anderson's account, Glanton swept onto the Barnes board like Genghis Khan, throwing out the established procedures of the institution and setting up a new order that served his interests entirely. Some of what he did was overt: in 1995, for example, he was accused of running up personal expenses on the Barnes account of ''almost $57,000.'' Other activities were not so open. He fired the long-term security provider for the Barnes and hired another, without telling his board, allowing his enemies to accuse him of doing it to strengthen his hand in local politics. He chose a lawyer for one of the Barnes's legal actions (to the tune of $448,127.01) who would later become one of his major supporters at his law firm. He regularly acted without board approval and failed to heed the letter of Alfred Barnes's indenture. When asked, later on, about his methods, he said, ''I was the Barnes Foundation.''

To counter arguments, Glanton played the race card. When he had transferred bank funds without board approval and was challenged in writing by a board member, he wrote back, ''This acknowledges your memorandum objecting to the Foundation's funds being deposited in the United Bank, the only African-American bank in Philadelphia.'' When opposition to the diversion of money from the Barnes to Lincoln University mounted, Glanton replied, ''They are saying black institutions shouldn't be allowed to benefit from relationships which exist.'' When a board member questioned the financing of a newsletter, Glanton accused him of ''acting in a racist manner.''

He pushed the tactic to its limit in a fight over a parking lot for the Barnes Collection. Glanton wanted to make the Barnes a more profitable institution, which meant he had to accommodate more visitors' cars. Neighbors in the residential suburb where the Barnes is located did not relish having their roads crowded, and invoked a zoning ordinance to block the construction of the parking lot. In turn, Glanton slapped them with a lawsuit under the Ku Klux Klan Act, claiming that the whole dispute erupted because the Barnes board was predominately black and the museum was associated with Lincoln -- a claim, the court found, that was clearly without basis.

The enormously expensive legal actions Glanton initiated are dizzying. Between 1990 and 1995, the Barnes spent more than $2 million in legal fees....

This is a bonfire of second-rate vanities, which reads best as a portrait of a man pathetic not only for his aspirations, but also because he is clearly smart enough to have done something better.

Another book ("Barnescam: Or How to Steal $20 Billion" by history profssor Robert Zaller) takes a more scathing view:

The last ten years have seen that strategy played out to near-perfection. The prevarication and legal trumpery involved would have shamed most cities, but not Philadelphia.

Richard Glanton, who was forced out as board president in 1997, is on record as opposing a move of the Barnes collection. It was he, however, who made it possible, and he should certainly be willing to take the credit.

The proceeds of the world tour were supposed to pay for renovation of the elegant mansion that housed the Barnes collection. No accounting was given of its disbursement, but large sums seem to have been spent frivolously, and much of the Barnes's financial assets were wasted on suits against the Barnes's neighbors, who, suddenly confronted with the consequences of Glanton's Barnumesque marketing (noisy bus tours that backed into their driveways, etc.), sought relief to protect their privacy and property. By the time the dust had settled, the foundation was genuinely in debt, with legal judgments hanging over its head.

At this point, Glanton was dismissed, and, seeing opportunity strike, a consortium of Philadelphia-based philanthropies--the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Annenberg and Lenfest Foundations--took financial and, finally, executive control of the Barnes.

The last act of the charade was to appear once again in Orphans Court before the ever-obliging Judge Ott, when the Barnes trustees requested permission to move the Barnes collection lock, stock and barrel to an unascertained location on the Ben Franklin Parkway, there to become part of a new Miracle Mile of the arts...

As one of the Inquirer's own critics commented privately, the Pew Foundation had acquired a $20 billion asset for an outlay of $150 million--a steal, one might add, by any definition of the word.

I think it's sad, though. It's just another example of the way things happen in the shady and unaccountable world of "Non-profit."

But what will probably be my last visit to the Barnes made me remember some photo impressionism. I use the "impressionism" reservedly, as that wasn't the goal of the distorted photos which follow, which are probably a result of deliberate incompetence by design (although I can't be sure).

Here's a view under glass out my window:

On the road, from the car, and through the windshield, minus flash:

In the yard at night minus flash:

I wish I could paint like that.