Andy,
Solely by virtue of its Impressionist holdings, the Barnes Foundation ranks as one of Philadelphia’s four world-class cultural institutions in the sense that it draws global audiences. (The others, in my book, are the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Curtis Institute of Music.) But the Barnes is an idiosyncratic institution in that it springs largely from the eccentric vision of a single brilliant but angry individual. In a sense you could say that Albert Barnes cornered the market on great art and then used his monopoly to exact revenge against the upper-class Philadelphians he hated (and who presumably couldn’t live without great art). Barnes was an anti-Philadelphian, but only a nonassertive, Quaker city like ours would have tolerated such a character, which I guess is to our credit.
When the Barnes holdings were first exhibited at the Musee d’Orsay in Paris in 1993, I accompanied a Philadelphia civic goodwill delegation there. Amazing the excitement that exhibit generated. The whole city was at our feet–the mayor of Paris, the president of the French Senate, then-U.S. Ambassador Pamela Harriman–everywhere we went, people were thanking us for sharing this treasure with them. We felt the way the Phillies must have felt in Philadelphia when they won the World Series in 1980.
Which brings me to your column in Monday’s Inquirer about the dubious economic value of sports stadiums for American cities. In Philly as elsewhere, it’s widely believed that without major league sports teams, a city will be perceived as minor league. Yet no such perception has dogged, say, Paris, London, or Rome. Even Los Angeles has survived the purported humiliation of losing its pro football team without noticeable harm to its civic reputation. Back in the ‘60s and early ‘70s, Philadelphia’s civic boosters were similarly exercised because our city lacked a Playboy Club, which supposedly symbolized the major leagues of hip sophistication. Yet somehow our reputation survived.
The trouble with Philadelphia is it’s unique–and instead of celebrating our uniqueness, Philadelphians are embarrassed by it. It’s the birthplace of modern democracy, the world’s most important phenomenon of the past millennium. Yet our boosters are forever worrying about attracting sports teams and conventions and gambling dens and strip joints. If they lived in Paris, their tourism slogan would be “The City of Light–Plus 10,000 Great Restaurants!” To paraphrase Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, if our uniqueness is a curse, may we be stricken with it, and may we never recover.
Dan
