Summary

A thrilling documentary whodunit, "The Art of the Steal" chronicles the long, politically charged struggle for control of the Barnes Foundation, the greatest collection ever assembled of Post-Impressionist and early Modern art. In 1922, Dr. Albert C. Barnes, a rags-to-riches industrialist and visionary art collector, established an educational institution based on his vast, unparalleled collection of masterworks by the likes of Van Gogh, Picasso, Cezanne, Renoir, and Matisse. A true iconoclast, Barnes pointedly ran the Barnes Foundation as a school and not a museum, arranged the art according to his own sensibility, and housed it in the leafy suburbs of Philadelphia, distancing himself from the city and cultural elite that he despised. Those who'd scorned his collection as consisting of "horrible, debased art," later coveted and schemed to control it. After Dr. Barnes died in 1951, his foundation was bequeathed to Lincoln University, a small African-American college, with strict instructions for leaving his school and his collection untouched. More than fifty years later, a powerful group of moneyed interests have plotted to relocate the art to a new museum in Philadelphia. With the Governor, the Mayor, and several of the country's most powerful charitable organizations on the verge of moving the Barnes, a loyal group of former students have gone to court to stop them. Will the students succeed in their David vs. Goliath campaign, or will a man's will be broken and one of America's greatest cultural monuments be destroyed? A fascinating and thought-provoking investigation into the collision of art and commerce, "The Art of the Steal" weaves together archival and dramatic new footage with candid interviews from all sides of the hotly contested debate. Philadelphia-based Argott ("Rock School") takes the viewer into the back rooms of corporations and government, where decisions over the fate of our cultural institutions are enshrouded in secrecy and tangled in strategic red tape, and into the still-standing institute, whose days as a one-of-a-kind art haven may be numbered. "The Art of the Steal" is a bold, impassioned film that is destined to court controversy and inspire vital, timely discussions about the fate of our cultural legacy. Whose art is it anyway?