Barnes artworks set to be moved

A campaign to move the financially troubled Barnes Foundation’s collection of Impressionist, post-Impressionist and African art to a downtown Philadelphia site has reached its $150-million goal, foundations backing the effort said.

Bernard C. Watson, the Barnes’ chairman, said the funds ensured that the multibillion-dollar collection of Renoirs, Cezannes, Matisses and Picassos would be moved from the limestone gallery the late Dr. Albert Barnes built in the 1920s in affluent Lower Merion Township to a new gallery where foundation officials have said they could be viewed by as many as 200,000 people a year.

Barnes left strict instructions in his will that the paintings were never to be moved, but a judge in December ruled that the foundation could break that directive.

Of the total raised, $100 million is planned to build the new museum on a site being donated by the city on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway near the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Rodin Museum, and $50 million is to go for the endowment for the museum.