The Art of the Steal
The Art of the Steal Image
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Metascore
75 out of 100

Generally favorable reviews - based on 19 Critics What's this?

User Score
7.5 out of 10

Generally favorable reviews- based on 6 Ratings

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  • Summary: In 1922, Dr. Albert C. Barnes created The Barnes Foundation in Lower Merion Pennsylvania, five miles outside of Philadelphia. He formed this remarkable collection of Post-Impressionist and early Modern art to serve as an educational institution. Dr. Barnes built his Foundation away from the city and cultural elite who scorned his collection as “horrible, debased art,” and set it on the grounds of his own home, an arboretum in the leafy suburbs. Tastes changed, and soon the very people who belittled Barnes wanted access to his collection. When Dr. Barnes died in a car accident in 1951, he left control of his collection to Lincoln University, a small African-American college. His will contained strict instructions, stating the Foundation shall always be an educational institution, and the paintings may never be removed. Such strict limitations made the collection safe from commercial exploitation. But was it really safe? More than fifty years later, a powerful group of moneyed interests have gone to court to take the art – recently valued at more than $25 billion – and bring it to a new museum in Philadelphia. Standing in their way is a group of former students who are trying to block the move. Will the students succeed, or will a man’s will be broken and one of America’s greatest cultural monuments be destroyed? (Sundance Selects)… Expand

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 18 out of 19
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 19
  3. Negative: 0 out of 19
  1. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    88
    What is finally clear: It doesn't matter a damn what your will says if you have $25 billion, and politicians and the establishment want it.
  2. New York Magazine (Vulture)
    Reviewed by: David Edelstein
    80
    Calculated to enrage and pulling it off like gangbusters, Don Argott’s documentary The Art of the Steal pits the legacy of the late Albert C. Barnes’s Barnes Foundation (which boasts arguably the world’s finest collection of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art) against the social-climbing, philistine, downright Nixonian machinations of Philadelphia’s wealthiest--who gamed the system and pried the collection loose in defiance of Barnes’s legal will.
  3. Time Out New York
    Reviewed by: Joshua Rothkopf
    80
    Despite the unsubtlety of the movie’s stance, a dizzyingly complex portrait emerges: that of pissed-off museum neighbors, arrogant critics and even the NAACP’s dignified Julian Bond, articulating a racial component.
  4. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Elizabeth Weitzman
    60
    Argott treats Barnes' story as an intellectual crime thriller, uncovering each new surprise -- and a seemingly endless parade of villains -- with a deadpan flourish.

See all 19 Critic Reviews

User Reviews

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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 1
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 1
  3. Negative: 0 out of 1
  1. Tony
    8
    A suspenseful and ultimately tragic look at how a man's $25 billion art collection has been completely undermined by those who do not care about his intentions or philosophy. I'm not sure why Ed Rendell would have agreed to be interviewed for this because he comes off like a real jag.… Expand

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