The Art of the Steal: Some Thoughts

This film was so interesting to me. I thought it illuminated some key things about humanity.

We have an innate instinct to protect the past, and other people's creations. It seems to stem from the need to protect life itself. One of the people interviewed for the film even said, "Art isn't something separate from life. It is life." As humans, we are enemies of death. So we fight it in our own way. We cannot keep people from dying, so we hold on to as many aspects of them as possible. This could be an entire race or era full of people as we try and preserve their heritage and what they were all about, or it could be in the case of a single person, like Albert Barnes.

Barnes was just one person, and a good amount of the wrong behind the Barnes controversy was the State of Philidelphia's decision to go against Barnes' dying wishes. It is directly ignoring a portion of a man's life, making him slave to the consequences of death, the enemy of all men. Naturally a person who understands this would feel betrayed by any fellow human who would deny someone their legacy, and their free will. But in addition, we could view Barnes as the protector of each life that was reflected or projected in the art he possessed. By violating his wishes, the State of Philidelphia also overlooked the best interests the lives represented by each signature on every painting. Life, expression, history... Barnes was the steward of so much. Yet the State of Philidelphia did not honor his well-thought-out desires for the collection. I think that is one of the underlying reasons why most people were so easily enraged by the actions of Philidelphia. While the leaders of the state did not harm the collection, they destroyed Barnes' arrangement of the art and his intentions for its use. Like I said, his written words were one of the last evidences of his life, and it could only be ignorance or cruelty that would lead men to deny Barnes this shred of dignity in his deceased state.

The other thing that somehow just stuck out to me about this film, that I remember when I look back on watching it, was that Albert Barnes was not popular during his lifetime. Especially in the museum world, he and his collection were both harshly criticized. He had an opinion that was different from most of the rest of the world about how to utilize his artwork, and even in the face of opposition, he stuck to it. I admire him for this. It's not easy to be one of the only people who hold to any one opinion, and to be treated badly because of it. Yet he did not chance his stance once during the course of his life, and I think it's cool to see how many people agree with him now that the controversy is so prominent. Albert Barnes may not have been liked during his life, but now, after his death, he is respected. He did not use his art for his own advance, but solely for the education of young people. He brought a set of unique ideas to students. His legacy has not been properly respected, but Albert Barnes himself never let up, doig what he could to preserve what he believed was right. I think he would have been a very cool person to know.

In conclusion, I think it will be interesting to see how the issues presented in this particular controversy reappear in other museum stories as we press on in this course.