Philadelphia Is on the Brink of Becoming An Art Capital of the U.S.A.

In the course of a quick trip to Philadelphia last Saturday to speak at the Philadelphia Inquirer Travel Show, I learned of upcoming developments in that City of Brotherly Love that will make it a real contender for the top American position in the world of art. Three imminent openings of new art museums and museum exhibits will make Philadelphia the equal of any other U.S. city in the cultural field.
 
The first event, of extraordinary significance, is the opening on May 19 of the new Barnes Foundation Museum in the heart of the city, making available to art lovers hundreds of masterworks that have been available for viewing in previous years only in the most limited sense. In downtown Philadelphia, visitors and residents will be able to view and appreciate some 69 rarely-seen paintings by Cezanne, 59 by Matisse, 49 by Picasso, and a staggering 181 by Renoir, among others--the legacy to our generation from an immensely skilled collector of art, Albert Barnes, who died in 1951.
 
Barnes was the Philadelphia chemist who invented and produced Argyrol, an effective drug for the cure of infant blindness. He amassed a huge fortune and took it to Europe to purchase masterworks of art at bargain prices -- impressionist, post-impressionist and modern works that he sometimes picked up for a little as a few hundred dollars per painting. His collection is now valued at between $20-30 billion. He gave every such work to a foundation whose resulting activities, however, he severely restricted. They were to be displayed only in a small museum in Merion, Pennsylvania, a difficult-to-reach Philadelphia suburb (he apparently had a dislike for Philadelphia itself), where they could be displayed only two or three times a week, and sometimes not at all. Stories are told of celebrities who begged to view the Barnes collection and were rudely turned down by Barnes himself.
 
In the years following his death, the trustees of the Barnes Foundation embarked on highly controversial course designed to overcome the limitations he had placed upon them. Ironically, poor financial decisions and terrible leadership did what decades of legal maneuvering couldn't -- a court broke the will in order to save the collection. The works will now move from the crowded walls of Barnes' Merion mansion to an impressive new museum on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in the heart of Philadelphia, to attract what I believe will be millions of new visitors to Philadelphia in the years ahead.
 
But that's only the start of the new upgrades to the cultural treasures found on Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin Parkway. This coming spring, on a date soon to be announced, the newly refurbished and expanded Rodin Museum will be re-opened after a partial closing. And that museum, also on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, houses the largest collection of sculptures by Auguste Rodin outside of Paris' Musee Rodin.
 
Earlier, on February 1, and throughout February, March and April, the famous and equally impressive Philadelphia Museum of Art (also on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway) will unveil a major exhibition of works by Vincent Van Gogh -- the only museum in North America to show those paintings, presumably on loan from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
 
When you add these attractions to an already-existing array of smaller but excellent art and science museums in Philadelphia (and add also the historic area centered around Independence Hall, and the National Constitution Center), you find that Philadelphia will become an ever-more-stellar destination starting this Spring. You'll be well advised to study the procedures for obtaining tickets to showings that will undoubtedly be heavily booked -- and thus plan your own visit to this remarkable American city.