The "only sane place" to view art in America, according to Henri Matisse, is set to close its doors for good this Sunday. The Albert Barnes Foundation, a profoundly simple museum set on the outskirts of Philadelphia, will have its 800-painting collection, valued at an astonishing twenty-five billion dollars, moved to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in a new addition cheduled to open in the Spring of 2012. At first glance, this seems all well and good. The public will now have access to a one-of-a-kind collection of impressionist and modernist masteries -- just as Mr. Barnes would want, right? Unfortunately, the facts surrounding the upending of the Barnes collection tell a very different story. The State of Pennsylvania, through political pressure and judicial maneuvering, used the overreaching arm of the state to dismantle and destroy a man's legacy and life's work. Albert Barnes, after amassing a fortune from the antiseptic Argyrol, committed his life to art. In 1912, guided by close friends and artists, as well as his own....
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