You may have read the article by Patricia Horn and Matthew P. Blanchard in yesterday’s Inquirer about how the Barnes Foundation’s neighbors now want to keep the institution in the neighborhood and how a $10 million parking lot with access from the City Ave thoroughfare (bypassing the battleground of Latches Lane where school buses are forbidden) might cut the Gordian knot.It seems a reasonable, pragmatic idea, and that’s why it’ll never ever work. However, it doesn’t really change the fact that few of the “just folks” Barnes saw as his audience would be empowered to visit a place that is still, when all is said and done, pretty darn inaccessible.
The Barnes would serve its population better in Philadelphia at a location where people could walk to it or take the bus easily.
Watching the Barnes saga play out is torture.
(By the way, you may have to sign up for Philly.com to read this article. It doesn’t cost anything but you will be giving them your email address and some demographic info. That seems to be the way it is with most online newspapers. Sorry to make you go through this step to read the article.)
–photo by Bob Krist for Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation
