Suspense, Intrigue and The Art of The Steal

There are usually a couple of good staples I like talking about at parties: politics, art, art history, and movies – with a sweet tooth for film noir types of movies dealing with great robberies and the like. Well, much to my delight, it looks like The Art of The Steal has them all wrapped up in one passionate film by director Don Argott.

The film deals with the highly controversial subject of the moving of the Barnes Foundation, a jewel-box of a place located in an area of Lower Merion in Pennsylvania, to a public museum in downtown Philadelphia. For those of you not familiar with the Barnes Foundation, it is, to put it in in simple terms, one of the largest single collections of post-impressionistic paintings - in the world! And, it's not in a museum. Plus, it's here - in the U.S. The Barnes (as it is called locally) houses 69 Cézannes, 181 Renoirs, 60 Matisses, 44 Picassos and seven Van Goghs (not to mention vast quantities of African and Native American art, plus boxes of Rembrandt etchings) just to name a few.