The Barnes Case: Overturning a Will’s Restriction on an Art Museum
Indiana Prof. L. Lenkowski has
"http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110006033 ">an op-ed in the WSJ on
violating the will of someone who left paintings to set up an art museum.
This week’s decision by Judge Stanley Ott of Montgomery County Orphans’ Court to
approve a request by the trustees of the Barnes Foundation to relocate its
multibillion-dollar collection of artworks to downtown Philadelphia from
suburban Merion, Pa., would seem to put an end to a decadelong legal battle over
the organization’s future. But the repercussions may continue to be felt for
some time to come.
The court proceedings involved a challenge to the will of the foundation’s
benefactor, the pharmaceutical magnate Albert C. Barnes, which stipulated that
the collection’s arrangement embody Barnes’s own, unconventional ideas about how
art should be viewed. In fact, Barnes looked upon the foundation as more of a
school for teaching about art than a museum, and he limited access to it
accordingly. But longstanding financial problems, coupled with poor management,
endangered its survival.
That is why its trustees, backed by the Pennsylvania attorney general (who is
responsible for overseeing charities in the state), sought to move the
foundation from the suburbs to become part of a new museum that would be more
accessible to ticket-buying visitors. Three Philadelphia foundations also
pledged $150 million to help erect a new building and create an endowment for
its masterpieces, if the Barnes were allowed to move.
Like the increasingly frequent cases of cities using their power of eminent
domain to force sale of property by one private landowner to another, the Barnes
case seems to pit efficiency against property rights. I feel unhappy about not
being able to come down solidly for one or the other– as an economist, I should
be able to advise people about precisely this sort of hard case. Whatever the
legal arguments may be, the essence of the Barnes case is that people think
Barnes imposed inefficient restrictions on the museum he set up, and they want
to get rid of them. This is not too far different from someone doing silly
things with his property while he is alive, and we taking it away from him as a
result. I suppose that forcing the takers to go through a formal public process
helps a lot to make sure that the takings are desirable. But some of the
eminent domain cases I’ve heard about do not seem to present clear efficiency
gains, and smell more of government failure.