AFI FEST Los Angeles International Film Festival 2009

What is art’s relationship to the public at large, and who decides who gets to see it? Rarely has the City of Brotherly Love seemed so rancorous as in Don Argott’s fascinating, thoroughly researched documentary on the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania. The foundation, established by Dr. Albert Barnes in 1922, boasts one of the world’s largest collections of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and early Modern paintings—works that Barnes wished to make accessible to serious students and everyday people. But since his death in 1951, lawyers, elected officials, and businesspeople have sought to exploit the Foundation, ignoring the express wishes of Barnes never to turn his collection into an enormous tourist attraction—and never to move it to Philadelphia, a city he despised. THE ART OF THE STEAL is filled with intrigue, conflicting reports, enormous egos, and provocative questions about money, culture and art.

–New York Film Festival