More Art Being Sold. Well… All of It

There’s been a lot of financial problems in museums lately. In the UK, many smaller local authority museums have been threatened with becoming a budget cut. In the US, there’s a lot of talk of job layoffs.

Brandeis University in Massachusetts will not only close its Rose Art Museum, but also sell off the entire 6,000 piece collection.

Woah.

The university board of trustees voted unanimously to close the museum. Jonathan Lee, Chair of the Rose Art Museum board said:

“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.”

Now, The Art Law Blog has a list of most of the reactions from the usual suspects in the great deaccessioning blog debates, and I have to agree that this isn’t exactly the same as selling art for funding. This is selling to get completely out of the art game. All the punishments brought against institutions for selling are meaningless when brought against a museum that has disappeared. A university can probably shrug off any ostracising from most museum professionals organisations.

What is more damaging is that this university with such a focus on art courses now has no art. Its a cold, hard lesson this university is teaching their students: Money comes second to art.

Now would be time for something special. To avoid the art disappearing from public view, get a consortium of as many museums as possible to raise the $350 million required then either a) divide the art between them or b) create a “trust” collection that goes on tour around as many museums as possible. Then the museum organisations prove that the tenet of art in public ownership is something worth fighting for and worth upholding with actions of merit, not just actions of blackballing.

Unless this would create a “slippery slope” of everyone expecting to be bought out.

EDIT: Oh, and please sign the petition In Opposition to the Closing of the Rose Art Museum.  There’s also talk that a lot of the press releases sent by Brandeis University haven’t been exactly truthful.