FREE THE BARNES 800
by Walter Robinson



When a spiteful man builds a monument to his own spitefulness, we shouldn't be surprised if it attracts followers of similar stripe. So it is with Albert C. Barnes, the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pa., and the bizarre new documentary, The Art of the Steal. Playing for the last month at the IFC Cinema in the Village (the old Waverly Cinema), the film and its featured commentators -- who should know better -- advance with considerable relish the notion that the museum world is a hotbed of villainy.

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