I’m still reeling from the news that Brandeis University has announced the closing of the Rose Art Museum. Once a bastion of painterly painting under Carl Belz’s visionary directorship, the Rose has been a cherished art destination for me for many years. The building, designed by Philip Johnson, is small and not one of Johnson’s best works by any means. But the sensibility Belz brought to the place was exemplary. Judy Pfaff, Joan Snyder and a number of other important women artists were championed by Belz early in that particular visibility curve.
The outcry has been overwhelming. From the New York Times today:
The Massachusetts attorney general’s office said on Tuesday that it planned to conduct a detailed review of Brandeis University’s surprise decision to sell off the entire holdings of its Rose Art Museum, one of the most important collections of postwar art in New England.
The decision to close the 48-year-old museum in Waltham, Mass., and disperse the collection as a way to shore up the university’s struggling finances was denounced by the museum’s board, its director and a wide range of art experts, who warned that the university was cannibalizing its cultural heritage to pay its bills.
“This is one of the artistic and cultural legacies of American Jewry,” said Jonathan Lee, the chairman of the museum’s board of overseers, who said that “nobody at the museum — neither the director nor myself nor anyone else — was informed of this or had any idea what was going on.”
This account from the Wall Street Journal (with an excerpt posted on Slow Painting), also caught me:
The National Academy and MOCA did come perilously close to “going away,” due to financial circumstances specific to them that predated the general economic collapse.
The academy clawed its way back from the edge by selling two Hudson River School paintings — its most important Frederic Church and its only Sanford Gifford — to raise about $13.5 million for operations. By the time its desperation-driven plan to sell came to light on Dec. 5…the paintings were already gone — withdrawn from the public domain by an unidentified private foundation.
In making this risky move, the museum forfeited not only AAMD membership but also art loans from and collaborations with institutions that obey the strong recommendation of the association’s board. “These objects are there for the collective cultural patrimony of the people who live in this country. They are not fungible assets,” Mr. Conforti [president of the Association of Art Museum Directors] declared.
“These objects are there for the collective cultural patrimony of the people who live in this country. They are not fungible assets.”
Is that true?
My son, ever the devil’s advocate, wants to know details about the collection being sold before he mourns its loss. He’s young and iconoclastic, very distrustful about how art institutions and their collusive insider taste makers determine what is valuable and what is not.
Yeah, I’m cynical too. But I do know some of the holdings at the Rose. And the thought that those works will be gone is crushing to me.
What’s the answer? As the financial infrastructures needed to keep our culturecraft afloat continue to disintegrate, the solution is not simple. But I still feel bereft.
I agree, this is terrible news. I hope it’s not the beginning of a bigger trend. Unfortunately, I think art is treated as a fungible asset, and that’s why I’d like to see the government get more involved in providing and protecting public collections. What do you hear about the possibility of Obama creating something like an arts czar? I’d love to see more clearly earmarked public funds for established institutions but also a great deal more financial support for working artists. Seems like a good time to revive a WPA for the arts too.
As a Brandeis alum who has a great interest in art and a great love of the museum world but who, admittedly, never thought of the Rose as anything particularly exceptionally special, I am amazed at the number of top major news outlets reporting on this.
I very much hope to visit the Rose before it closes; I’ll be on campus for my reunion in June. Will it still be open by then?
Thank you very much for taking the time to post about the Rose.
LP, I’ll post the article from the Times on Monday regarding support for the arts. It is apropos to so many of our collective concerns
Toranosuke, I don’t know the answer to your question. But I will be watching this situation closing, so stay tuned.
This is a shocking move and I was hoping you would post about it. The idea that there are private citizens and foundations who maintain enormous wealth despite the economy, enough to remove public art from view is alarming. That universities may stoop to this because they are hurting financially is offensive, scary and sad.
Also, I think it is unconscionable for any institution to sell artwork to private citizens that was donated by private citizens for public display. It’s a betrayal and unethical.
Also, I love the quote by Jonathan Lee, head of overseers that the trustees and president should call Barack Obama and say we can solve the financial crisis by selling all the collections in the Smithsonian.