ohmidog!

Uprooting the art collection of Albert Barnes is one thing. Disrespecting his dog — who wasn’t one to suffer fools, either — is quite another.

We don’t know if Fidèle bit, but the millionaire’s dog, back when they were both alive, did write some pretty biting letters.

The art uprooting happened last year when, against his will (the written kind), the Barnes Foundation toted the eccentric collector’s masterpieces from suburban Merion to downtown Philadelphia — 181 Renoirs, 69 Cézannes, 59 Matisses and 46 Picassos included.

The dissing of Fidèle — a mid-sized black and white dog — just occured.

An exhibit at the new museum containing Fidèle’s dog bed, and several letters that the dog “wrote,” has been closed to make room for a showing of sculpture by Ellsworth Kelly, Bloomberg reports.

As the Bloomberg reporter sees it, the change — while maybe not anyone’s intention — further removes Barnes from the impressive array of art he collected:

“Less than a year after Albert Barnes’s art, uprooted from its original home in Merion, Pennsylvania, occupied new quarters, the collector himself has been removed from the Philadelphia museum that now houses his treasures.”

Last May, after years of lawsuits and heated opposition, and in a saga far too intricate to fully cover here, the Barnes Foundation, which oversees the collection, moved the art to a modern building in downtown Philadelphia, where it was thought it would be more accessible to the public.

That ran counter to what Barnes specified in the will he had written before his death in 1951, in which he expressly forbade moving the pictures from Merion.

The foundation – to show some respect to the man they were disobeying — opened the new downtown museum with a special show in tribute to him, entitled, “Ensemble: Albert C. Barnes and the Experiment in Education.”

It depicted the history of the collection, and the man behind it — a doctor, chemist and the developer of Argyrol, an antiseptic useful for the treatment of gonorrhea.

It also showcased his dog — both the bed specially constructed and inscribed for Fidèle, and some of the many letters Barnes wrote under his dog’s name, in French, and all stamped with a pawprint.

Fidèle once wrote Winston Churchill to congratulate him on the liberation of France (where she was from). More commonly, she wrote  to express her owner’s anger over something, or to art critics who had requested to view his master’s collection. Generally, she would reject the requests, sometimes in a rude and sassy manner that reflected Barnes’s distaste with the art establishment.

“While the Barnes tribute was never described as permanent, its removal struck some as a further slight to the man and his legacy,” Bloomberg reported.

The new exhibit, “Ellsworth Kelly: Sculpture on the Wall,” opens May 4. A spokesperson for the foundation said that, despite the old exhibit closing, continued efforts are underway to ensure Barnes keeps a high profile.

Fidèle’s profile appears to be less of a concern.

Maybe she should write a letter.

My Norwegian is a little rusty, so I can’t tell you much more than that this is an advertisement for an insurance company called Tryg in Norway.

I’m not sure if its message is don’t leave your dog in the car because it could die, or don’t leave your dog in the car because your window might get broken, or, you wouldn’t need to worry about your window getting broken if you have insurance.

Whichever it is, it still manages to make that first point, thanks to some fine acting by the dog in the starring role.

That’s Matisse, a four-year-old border collie who lives in Belgium. You can learn more about him, and the making of the commercial, in the video below.

(For all our “Woof in Advertising” selections click  here.)