All of this changed with De Mazia?s death in 1989. A politically connected Center City attorney, Richard H. Glanton, became president of the Lincoln board and de facto director of the foundation. If the Barnes had been in fiscal distress prior to his arrival, no one had ever given indication of it. It had operated, at modest cost and within the bounds of its indenture, for more than 60 years; it had coexisted amicably with its neighbors on the quiet residential street of Latch?s Lane in Lower Merion, who were (and are) proud of its presence in their midst; it had never appealed for funds.
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To Glanton, Lincoln was sitting on billions of dollars of unexploited capital. His goal was to turn the Barnes into a cash cow by raising its profile, opening its doors and marketing its product.
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Glanton?s fire sale was only a ploy; his real objective was to gain permission from the Barnes?s judicial overseers to mount a round-the-world tour of French masterpieces from the gallery. This, too, violated the founder?s indenture, but Judge Stanley R. Ott of the Montgomery County Orphans Court granted a waiver, with lobbying support from the Philadelphia Museum of Art and behind-the-scenes maneuvering by Walter Annenberg. The PMA?s quid pro quo was to be its designation as the last stop on the tour, an absurdity given the fact that the entire Barnes gallery had been closed for two years and would remain so through the PMA exhibition, though the Foundation was only five miles away.
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The last ten years have seen that strategy played out to near-perfection. The prevarication and legal trumpery involved would have shamed most cities, but not Philadelphia.
Richard Glanton, who was forced out as board president in 1997, is on record as opposing a move of the Barnes collection. It was he, however, who made it possible, and he should certainly be willing to take the credit.
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