Judge Rules the Barnes Can Move to Philadelphia

In a case that has riveted art lovers and trust-and-estate lawyers, a Pennsylvania judge ruled yesterday that the financially strapped Barnes Foundation could move its fabled art collection from a Philadelphia suburb to a museum quarter downtown, where more people could see it.

Judge Stanley R. Ott of the Montgomery County Orphans' Court said the proposed move, backed by pledges of $150 million in financial support primarily from three Philadelphia-area foundations, seemed the only realistic way to save the Barnes from bankruptcy and salvage its prized legacy.


The ruling circumvents the charter and bylaws drawn up the Barnes's mercurial founder, Albert C. Barnes, a patent-medicine millionaire who famously stipulated that no picture in his collection could be lent, sold or even moved on the walls of the neo-Classical galleries that he had built for it in the mid-1920's in Merion, Pa.

Barnes also restricted access to the collection's legendary riches - 170 Renoirs, 55 Cézannes, 20 Picassos - by limiting visitors to 1,200 a week, a rule that seemed almost to heighten the collection's cult appeal for museumgoers longing to glimpse masterpieces like Cézanne's "Card Players" or van Gogh's "Postman" in a quirkily intimate setting.

Judge Ott said in his decision yesterday that he could see "no viable alternative" to a move.