The Art of the Steal Review: Barnes Collection Movie Comes to Boston

It's fitting that a movie whose ethos are so thoroughly grounded in the muckraking tendencies of the Age of Dewey (not-decimal) should be even somewhat connected to progressive education. Sure, the majority of the new film The Art of the Steal, which examines attempts to move an art collection to Philadelphia, is spent agitating for individual property rights. However, the reason we come to care deeply about the fate of the Barnes collection is that the movie persuades us intellectually.

We see Barnes less as a "cantankerous old man who died without a friend in the world" (as one participant in the sometimes-lively IFFBoston Q & A we attended put it [whew! Michael Kinsley would not be happy with us]) than as a man with an idiosyncratic pedagogical vision and the money to carry it out. The Barnes of The Art of the Steal—and almost nowhere else—is an unabashed hero at the vanguard of a progressive education that emphasized learning how to experience art over collecting previous appreciations. (See this Randolph Bourne article, thankfully internetized by The New Republic, for an introduction.)

But we're getting aside ourselves. The Art of the Steal is fundamentally a movie about the CONSPIRACY perpetrated by a cabal of politicians (local and state), philanthropists (famous and not), local universities, and—above all—the Pew Charitable Trusts, to move Barnes' art collection from its home in blue-blooded Merion, PA to a new museum in Philadelphia. That their machinations involve dismantling private property rights and manipulations of testacy make the film wildly engaging, even when we can't completely suspend our disbelief. The connect-the-dots conspiracy is convincing in the way that all conspiracy theories are convincing, and even more so since the interviewees are remarkably amusing and the film's narrative voice is so determined and earnest. Good editing helps tremendously.

A more complete perspective is available, but The Art of the Steal is high entertainment, no matter where you stand on the issues. The film comes to Kendall tomorrow.