Officials in a Philadelphia-area suburb have vowed to continue their fight against a planned move of the multibillion-dollar Barnes fine art collection into the city's downtown.

Last week, Barnes Foundation officials — who administer the treasure trove that includes canvases by Cézanne, Picasso, Renoir and van Gogh — rejected a $50-million US offer to keep the famed art collection in Lower Merion Township in Montgomery County, about 17 kilometres northwest of Philadelphia. They described the offer as arriving too late to be taken seriously.

The Barnes Foundation collection, shown on Tuesday, is in Lower Merion, but foundation officials want it moved to Philadelphia.
(George Widman/Associated Press)

The group of Montgomery County commissioners who made the offer have vowed to take the Barnes Foundation to court in an effort to stop the move.

The idea for a location change to a more tourist-friendly venue arose in 2002, when the foundation revealed it is suffering serious financial woes and proposed the move as a way to avoid selling off individual pieces of the acclaimed collection.

Two years later, a court ruled in favour of the foundation's decision to break with founder Albert Barnes's will, which said the gallery must stay in Lower Merion.

Emotions are riding high over a proposed move of the Barnes Foundation collection, as this sign shows.
(George Widman/Associated Press)

A subsequent appeal against the move was later nixed by the Pennsylvania Surpeme Court.

In 2006, Barnes officials announced they had raised the $150 million US necessary to complete the move, with two-thirds earmarked to build a new facility near the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Rodin Museum, and the remainder to go to an endowment fund.

However, construction of a new museum has still not begun on the city-donated downtown lot because the juvenile jail facility on the site has yet to be relocated.

Since it was first proposed, traditionalists have opposed the move as contrary to what Barnes had envisioned, while others have criticized the plan as an attempt by Philadelphia to claim the collection for itself.

Founder sought fresh, unexpected artistic display

Pharmaceutical magnate Barnes established his 25-room gallery in the affluent Lower Merion Township in 1925. The art lover, who died in 1951, stipulated in his will that the gallery remain at its current location, and that the collection never be sold or moved from the unconventional and eclectic manner in which he himself had arranged the pieces.

Over the years, however, as the gallery's reputation grew among art aficionados, the venue has suffered because of Barnes's stringent guidelines, which included limiting access to the artwork.

At its present location, only 400 visitors a day are permitted to see the Barnes collection, which is only open to the public three days a week. The foundation has also said that limited parking and high fees imposed by the township have negatively affected the gallery's finances.

In addition to a world-renowned collection of impressionist and post-impressionist masterpieces, the Barnes collection also includes thousands of other artworks and antiquities hailing from Africa, Asia, South America, Europe and the Middle East.

With files from the Associated Press