Brandeis's Rose Art Museum, photo by redgoldfly
Brandeis University’s Rose Art Museum appears to be going under. Art bloggers and journalists alike are agast at the prospect that the museum will sell it’s art collection to inject capital into the university’s endowment. It seems like a perfectly reasonable course of action to me. I have a very good friend who is currently applying to graduate school at Brandeis, so this has many levels of interest for me.
Looking Around had a sweet little nugget of information about the Rose and one of the university’s major contributors to its endowment being involved in the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme. Say whatever you want, the people involved in the ponzi scheme aren’t “victims”. The investors hoped to do to others what ended up happening to them, in a highly risky, illegal racket which they knowingly got involved in. Spare me the cock and bull about victimhood. But I digress.
Today there is a story that the university may not sell all the artworks, but that they will definitely close the museum. Oopsie, looks like the university got ahead of itself earlier this week by saying they were divesting themselves of their entire collection. Certain ethical laws prohibit the sale of the works tied to the museum. So, to get around certain prohibitions, the school is first closing the museum. The public line now is that the school may not sell all of the pieces, but after a while, it’s reasonable to think they’ll get around to selling the works. The endowment shortfall is significant, and the sale of one or two pieces won’t be enough to cover the losses. Moreover, to sell most of the art works, but not all really has no purpose. Why hang onto a couple of pieces if the majority of their collection has gone away?
What’s potentially an earthquake issue is how much the works eventually sell for. In the dire economic climate, selling these works at significantly lower prices could affect the value of major Modern Art collections around the world. The issue of whether the works remain in the Brandeis collection is irrelevant, as far as I can see. It matters not where the works reside and hang from time to time. The depressed sale of the works is what’s really going to send the market into convulsions.
To be honest, I don’t understand the widespread consensus of panic around the art blogosphere, each of whom seem to be in an feigned emotional nosedive over the proposed museum closure and sale of artworks. Although the estimated price of the collection is significant, the collection is a relatively minor art collection. I grew up in New England and have seen just about every venue in Boston and MA. Brandeis alums and university patrons may understandably be saddened by the loss of a cultural asset, but for everyone else outside of that small circle, I don’t understand all the hand wringing. If the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum were closing and selling the works, then I could understand the outrage, but this little collection? Meh, its a slow newsweek.
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