Philly Mag Writer Picks a Fight with Barnes Activists

Liz Spikol, a writer and blogger for Philadelphia Magazine, is this month’s unofficial Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest on the Main Line.

Her piece in the magazine’s June issue, republished Wednesday on the magazine’s “Philly Post” blog, is entitled, “Barnes Fight is Disproportionate to the Debate’s Importance.” It drew some 30 responses in the first day alone, most of them vociferously attacking her premise, her facts, and her standing as a journalist.

“For a city that suffers so many grievous social ills—poverty, funding cuts, horrific public schools—it’s something of a mystery why this particular battle became the high-profile, attention-sucking bandit that it did,” Spikol wrote. “Perhaps it has something to do with money.”

Spikol, a longtime columnist for Philadelphia Weekly before landing at Philadelphia Magazine, was taking measure of the last month of the Barnes Foundation being open to the public in Merion. In a few weeks, the process of moving the world-renowned art collection to its new home on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia will have started. The new museum and school will be next door to the Rodin Museum, and midway between the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts on North Broad Street.

Between July and sometime in 2012, when the collection is unveiled in its new home, Spikol said that there is “a vain chance that people will shut up about the whole thing for a while.”

“Despite the success of the polemical film The Art of the Steal, this debate has been far out of proportion to its importance,” Spikol wrote. “We’re talking about a single art collector who arranged his paintings in a particular configuration. Period. ... This is not akin to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto—this is a small art collection, nothing more.”

Those who have fought to keep the Barnes in Merion are irate, to say the least.

“Wow ... such ignorance,” wrote commenter Tom D. “De-spik-able!” proclaimed Maureen Winterhager, playing on the writer’s name. “Polemic and truth-bending! Where’s your journalistic ethos gone, Ms Spikol? Whose pew are you sitting on now?”

“You’re an embarrassment,” stated a commenter known only as Mark. “I won’t even call you a reporter or a journalist, because you are far from it.”

Spikol has responded to the comments twice as of this writing. “This response is part of my point: passion, energy, tenacity—these are all qualities that could now be marshaled on behalf of other causes,” Spikol said, addressing her critics. “I don’t deny art’s place in the life of a city. But I happen to think other issues are more urgent.”

On the Friends of the Barnes website, a rebuttal to the piece labels the Philly Mag piece “a hysterical conniption fit” and is more than a third again as long as Spikol’s column. “It would be weird if it weren’t so dumb. It would be dumb if it weren’t so contrived,” the response begins. 

Hyman Myers wrote to say that Spikol’s point about wasting private time and money was a good one—but not in the way Spikol intended.

“The Barnes Foundation is spending over $100 million of public funds on the faux Barnes, when the existing facility is perfectly able to house the art as it was originally designed and intended by Dr. Barnes,” Myers commented. “There could have been a lot better uses of those funds in our state’s economy had it had not been wasted on a new, ‘faux’ building. Shame on the state government and on the Barnes Foundation, and you, Liz for not making that more clear.”

The Friends of the Barnes’ posting made a similar argument: “Look, $200 million (the projected cost for the Parkway) would put an art teacher in every school in Philadelphia for 15 years, so don’t lecture the Friends about socially responsible activities.”

In another reference to The Art of the Steal in one of her responses to the criticism, Spikol added, “I’d love to see a film about wealthy people in Philadelphia raising Barnes-style hell about the city’s poverty.”

The Friends of the Barnes also takes umbrage with Spikol’s assertion that the Barnes fight has been over-reported in the press.

“Whose interests are being served by publishing this crap?,” the Friends rebuttal asks. “Not the readers of the magazine, for sure. The piggy and powerful Philly-stines must be getting desperate. Fortunately, there are information outlets today that aren’t under their control.”

Editor’s note: Coincidentally, Ardmore-Merion-Wynnewood Patch will be publishing a previously scheduled story on Friday about the final days of the Barnes Foundation’s public galleries. Check back tomorrow for an overview from writer Amanda Mahnke.