The Art of the Steal

Dr Albert Barnes made a fortune early in the twentieth century and used it to assemble one of the largest private post-impressionist collections in the world. Renoir, Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso; it is valued today in the billions. Barnes left the collection to an educational foundation outside Philadelphia and wrote it plainly into his will: the paintings were never to be sold, lent or moved. Barnes died in 1951. The documentary is about what happened next: a fifty-year struggle between the foundation's trustees, the city, the state and major donors, ending with the collection moved into central Philadelphia. Don Argott directs; a hundred and one minutes. The film is openly against the move; the other side rejects the accusations and points out that the courts approved it.