How important was the Barnes Collection? I learn from the press notes of "The Art of the Steal" that it included 181 Renoirs, 69 Cezannes, 59 Matisses, 46 Picassos, 16 Modiglianis and seven van Goghs. Barnes collected these works during many trips to Paris at a time when establishment museums, such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, considered these artists beneath their attention. Some of the paintings are today, literally priceless; one estimate of the collection's worth is $25 billion. That was a lot of art to be sitting in Merion. Barnes knew it was. He designed every detail of his collec...