Ailing Brandeis will shut museum, sell treasured art

No other choice, says president

The Brandeis president called the Rose Art Museum largely a hidden jewel. (Globe Staff Photo / David L. Ryan)

Rocked by a budget crisis, Brandeis University will close its Rose Art Museum and sell off a 6,000-object collection that includes work by such contemporary masters as Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, and Nam June Paik.

The move shocked local arts leaders and drew harsh criticism from Rose supporters and the Association of College and University Museums and Galleries. Michael Rush, the Rose Art Museum director, only learned of the decision late yesterday afternoon, hours after the university's board of trustees voted unanimously to close the 48-year-old museum.

In an interview last night, he estimated the collection’s value could top $350 million. Still, the director and other museum supporters took issue with the university's decision, which came after endowment losses and a sharp slowdown in fund-raising.

"It is the largest asset that the university owns, and it is a world-class asset," said Jonathan Lee, who chairs the Rose's board of overseers. "So they're saying, 'Oops, we've had some bad reversals in our endowment investments, and we're going to make it up by selling our art.' What a second-class institution we've decided to be."

Brandeis president Jehuda Reinharz said yesterday that the university had no other choice. The university's endowment had suffered in the economic meltdown, and Reinharz said he anticipated further fallout from the Bernard Madoff scandal, in which several longtime Brandeis donors have lost money.

"This is not a happy day in the history of Brandeis," Reinharz said last night. "The Rose is a jewel. But for the most part it's a hidden jewel. It does not have great foot traffic, and most of the great works we have, we are just not able to exhibit. We felt that, at this point given the recession and the financial crisis, we had no choice."

A university spokesman said that Brandeis's endowment, which topped $700 million at one point, is down dramatically, though he declined to say by how much. Closing the Rose is likely to be one among several cost-cutting moves meant to bridge a budget deficit that could be as high as $10 million. Options include cutting faculty by 10 percent, boosting undergraduate enrollment, and overhauling the undergraduate curriculum by eliminating individual academic programs in favor of larger, interdisciplinary divisions.

The university may also require students to take one summer semester, allowing Brandeis to expand without overcrowding. The changes would take place, at the earliest, in 2010.

Brandeis said the museum would be closed late this summer. It was founded in 1961; a new wing designed by celebrated architect Graham Gund was added in 2001. Rush estimated museum attendance at between 13,000 and 15,000 annually.

After the art works are sold at auction, the building will be used as a fine arts teaching center with studio space and an exhibition gallery. A Brandeis spokesman said that the Massachusetts attorney general's office, which oversees donations, has been informed of the move and will not block it. Money from the sale of the art will be reinvested in the university.

Rush, a leading expert on video art, had arrived in 2005 with plans to expand the museum. He also launched a full scale analysis of the collection's value by Christie's auction house.

Rush said last night that he had commissioned the analysis to show the administration the importance of the permanent collection and to encourage it to move forward on an expansion.

"There's always a risk with that," he said. "Some people have said, 'Don't let people know what you have.' Because once you do, people may think differently about what you have."

While museums regularly deaccession individual pieces, the wholesale sell-off of a collection of the Rose's stature is unprecedented. Codes of practice common among museums stress that art should not be sold to cover operating expenses.

"Clearly, what's happening with Brandeis now is that they decided the easiest way is to look around the campus and find things that can be capitalized," said David Robertson, a Northwestern University professor who is president of the Association of College and University Museums and Galleries. "It's always art that goes first."

Built to house a small group of art works and the porcelain collection of its benefactors, the Rose grew quickly under the leadership of its first director, Sam Hunter, who came from the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Over the years it has grown especially strong in American art of the 1960s and 1970s, and includes works by Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Morris Louis, and Helen Frankenthaler. Besides its permanent collection, the museum also puts on a roster of other shows, with a retrospective of work by the abstract expressionist Hans Hofmann up now.

"I'm in shock," said Mark Bessire, the recently named director of the Portland Museum Of Art. "This is definitely not the time to be selling paintings, anyway. The market is dropping. I'm just kind of sitting here sweating because I can't imagine Brandeis would take that step."

A recent survey of auction houses showed that prices are down dramatically. Auctions in late 2008 at Sotheby’s and Christie's raised a combined $238 million, down from equivalent sales the year before of a combined $640 million.

The move also angered David Genser, a Boston-area collector who last year gave the Rose a James Rosenquist drawing.

"This art was never given to the museum for those purposes," he said. "It should be a last resort. I can't understand how Brandeis is in such dire straits."

Lee, the overseer, said he was disturbed by the secrecy by which the administration operated. Reinharz said talks about closing the Rose began six weeks ago. But Lee said he learned of the decision in a series of phone calls last night from Rush, Rose donor Lois Foster, and Whitney Museum of American Art director Adam Weinberg.

"There's a history of the Rose, a beautiful history in the annals of contemporary art that is not understood by the president or any of the board of trustees," said Lee. "What they’re doing is a travesty."

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com. Peter Schworm of the Globe staff contributed to this report.

Correction: Because of incorrect information provided to the Globe by a Brandeis University spokesman, a Page One story yesterday on the university's decision to close the Rose Art Museum and sell its art incorrectly characterized where the attorney general's office stands on the matter. The office was merely informed of the university's intention and has not taken a position.