Hi MaryAnn,

Good questions. The mural is on canvas, I believe. And I think my correction needs a correction. Its called "Dance Heroique." "Dance II" dates from 1910 and is one of those paintings of nudes dancing in a circle. Here's an interesting Time article from 1933 on the mural. As it suggests, the mural was designed to specifically play off the garden seen from the windows beneath it. So even though it will be moved to a similarly shaped wall in the new collection, it will not be the exact same context.

Of course keeping the art in the original arrangement was a concession in getting the deal done. My point was the concession is trivial, because once you move it from the context of the Barnes mansion, the original arrangement no longer has as much power. Its an interesting way to look at the art, but its rooted in Barnes' formalist notions that discount everything in a painting except shape, color, and line. For Barnes, forms in one painting could find cousins in an adjacent painting by a totally unrelated artist. Frames and decorative objects were also meant to create visual links with each other and the paintings. In my earlier post, I suggested that the art would be swallowed in the Tsien and Williams spaces, which I guess is also technically wrong, because the galleries will be the same proportions as the rooms of the Barnes mansion. But unless they share the same mouldings, door frames, etc., some of Barnes' game will be lost, because the visual patterns he was creating took those into account. I can't imagine that Tsien and Williams will include Classical mouldings in the galleries (I haven't actually seen any renderings of the interiors of the galleries themselves, although all I've found is the 8 images that accompany the NY Times review). It would create the same glaring incongruity between traditional interior and ultra-modern exterior that mars Meier's Getty acropolis.

And again, I think the arrangements of the art is more interesting from an art historical perspective for what it says about Barnes and how great art was consumed by the very rich people who collected it than it does about the art itself. This is an interesting lesson, but it makes more sense in Barnes' actual house than in a Tsien and Williams box, no matter how textured the limestone that sheaths it.