Source revealed in Barnes grant

Opponents of a controversial plan to relocate the Barnes Foundation’s multibillion-dollar art collection from suburban Merion, Pa., to downtown Philadelphia have released a letter confirming the source of a $25-million state grant facilitating the move.

The grant was announced in March by Gov. Ed Rendell. The money “was authorized in the commonwealth’s capital budget by the state General Assembly in October of 2002,” wrote deputy budget secretary Mary A. Soderberg in an Aug. 18 letter to a Friends of the Barnes Foundation member.

The 2002 budget included $107 million in two Barnes allocations, but those funds’ existence was not made public until a report last month in The Times. Citing the Barnes’ financial problems, a Pennsylvania judged approved the relocation plan in 2004 without prior knowledge of the state appropriation.