Barnes Foundation Is a Story of ‘Recovery and Rebirth’

To the Editor:

We read with dismay and disappointment your article on the Barnes Foundation (“Sketching Out a Plan for Survival,” March 8). Not only was it replete with factual errors, but it also casts a long shadow on what should have been a wholly positive story of recovery and rebirth.

First the corrections:

The state court order that you mischaracterize was simply the Montgomery County Orphans’ Court scheduling of a date for the foundation to respond to a petition filed by one resident on Latch’s Lane [where the collection is located]. The court has not yet even considered the substance of the neighbor’s allegations.

In my two, not three, years at the foundation, we have developed a strategic plan with trustees, staff, and an outside consultant that outlines our five-year, $15-million (not $34-million) stabilization plan. While we know that our collection is very valuable, $20-billion is a “pie in the sky” number.

Dr. Barnes is a “Dr.” and not a “Mr.”

You also failed to acknowledge the many obstacles the foundation continues to face in its community.

Incorrectly characterized as being in a sleepy residential community, the foundation is in fact adjacent to Episcopal Academy, a private school with more than 1,200 students, which accommodates hundreds of cars and more than 50 buses daily. We abut St. Joseph’s University, an exemplary institution with more than 5,000 students, faculty, and visitors.

By contrast, the foundation can admit no more than 1,200 people per week, can be open to the public only three days per week, is subject to stringent transportation restrictions, and cannot admit more than 400 people in a day (pulsed at 20-minute intervals by reservation only). If we have informal education programs, we are generally limited to only 100 people per day. Moreover, these and other limits are vigilantly policed by residents bearing video cameras and notepads, further demonstrating that the foundation has hardly been permitted to escape the tensions of old.

If this sounds defensive, it is. Since Dr. Barnes’s death in 1951, the foundation has been deemed synonymous with whatever personalities were at the helm. Rumors, folk myths, and inaccuracies have overshadowed the real story.

For example, the various sources you quote and obviously relied upon are hardly authoritative. Indeed, you picked the very people whose motives can only be understood in the context of their many years of litigating against the foundation. Surely, your readers deserved the benefit of that information. Instead, you legitimized those who seek to impede the progress that the foundation has been able to make of late.

The Barnes Foundation has earnestly begun active development efforts since my arrival. We hired our first-ever development director, Anthony Ng, in February 1999.

To date, supporters include the Getty Trust, Pew Charitable Trusts, William Penn Foundation, Arcadia Foundation, Philadelphia Foundation, Independence Foundation, and numerous other foundations and individuals. Not bad for an organization with no track record in development — an organization that had never submitted a government grant application or cultivated foundation support.

We are recreating an organization that, at its core, is about democracy and education. While still frail, we have new staff, new trustees, and a new vision — one that embraces the ideals developed by Dr. Barnes more than 75 years ago. To constantly rehash bad memories and old news is the kind of damage to our momentum that we do not need.

Kimberly Camp
Executive Director and CEO
Barnes Foundation
Merion, Pa.

Editor’s note: The Chronicle did make several minor errors. It should have referred to the founder, Albert Barnes, as Dr. Barnes since he was a physician. Ms. Camp started in the fall of 1998, which The Chronicle should have more precisely noted rather than rounding 2 ½ years to three. The Chronicle also should have noted that while Ms. Camp said in an interview that the collection could be worth as much as $20-billion, she pointed out that all such estimates are speculative, at least until an inventory of the collection’s holdings is complete. Ms. Camp did say in the interview that the Barnes intends to raise $15-million over the next five years for what she calls the stabilization plan. She also said that the institution plans to raise other money in the short term — including $15-million to renovate and improve its facilities and $3-million for a collection assessment. The Chronicle never referred to the neighborhood as a sleepy residential community or characterized the court order that Ms. Camp refers to as a comment on the substance of the case. The order is a requirement that the Barnes Foundation must comply with as part of legal proceedings.