Saturday, March 26, 2011

Barnes Update (UPDATED 2X)

The Philadelphia Inquirer's Stephan Salisbury reports that the Barnes Foundation and the Pennsylvania Attorney General have filed their responses to the Friends of the Barnes's latest attempt to reopen the case opposing the move: "In [the latest] petition, the Friends of the Barnes asked Judge Stanley R. Ott, who has presided over the case since 2002, to take another look, based largely on quotes from the 2009 documentary movie The Art of the Steal. The Barnes and the attorney general argue in their responses that there is nothing new in the opponents' legal briefs or the movie, and that the Friends of the Barnes and its members cannot intervene in the case anyway because they have no legal standing."

UPDATE: The Main Line Times has more, including that the Barnes and the AG have asked for their attorney's fees. I'm not surprised.

UPDATE 2: LA Times art critic (and Art of the Steal talking head) Christopher Knight discovers a "surprise" in the motion: one of the five Philadelphia Inquirer stories cited in support of the proposition that the information in the petition is "not new" is from 2005, five months after the court ruled that the collection could be moved. That's true, but it's worth noting that there was a second petition filed in 2007 (by some of the same parties who've brought this third suit), which the court dismissed three years ago. So the 2005 article is "not new" in the sense that it preceded that second lawsuit.