Museum And Gallery

Will Brandeis sell out the Rose?

By GREG COOK | May 15, 2009

MONEY STORE: The Rose itself is almost entirely self-sufficient — but it has the assets that Brandeis can most easily convert into cash.

On the block? Works that could be looking for a new home

Andy Warhol | Saturday Disaster [1964] | Two stacked black-and-white screenprinted images of a fatal car crash from Warhol's Disaster series. Christie's auctioned off a similar 1963 Warhol crash painting for a record price of $71.7 million in 2007.

Ellsworth Kelly | Blue White [1962] | Two rounded blue forms kissing atop a white ground. A classic of crisp minimalist abstraction by a Boston Museum School alum.

Roy Lichtenstein | Forget It! Forget Me! [1962] | Romance comic writ large by a master of Pop.

Jasper Johns | Drawer [1957] | Gloomy gray painting with a faux drawer in the middle, part of Johns's early exploration of the painting as object.

Robert Rauschenberg | Second Time Painting [1961] | Meaty combine with embedded clock.

Philip Guston | Allegory [1947] | Rare 15-foot-wide early symbolic painting (found curled up in a storage room in 2006) by an Ab-Ex master with Boston ties.

Hyman Bloom | Corpse of a Man [1944-45] | Bloated, rotting corpse as if painted by Bonnard. One of the best of the Bostonian's early, chunky explorations of local morgues.

Roberto Matta | Untitled [1956] | Tour-de-force 20-foot-wide 1956 abstract painting resembling floating space stations.

Bruce Connor | Light Shower [1963] | Assemblage resembling a cracked-up bedroom wall by a Bay Area master rarely seen on the East Coast.

Willem de Kooning | Untitled [1961] | Big loose brushy action painting made as his compositions were opening up in the '60s.

Elizabeth Murray | Duck Foot [1983] | Bright red and yellow painting built around her signature abstracted cartoony forms on shaped canvases.

Florine Stettheimer | Music [circa 1920] | Icy, girly, drawing-room dream painting by the Jazz Age salon queen.

The backlash
Brandeis leaders began backpedaling almost as soon as the original announcement was made. On February 5, Reinharz stated that the collection would not be sold at once. "The University may have the option, subject to applicable legal requirements and procedures, to sell some artworks if necessary, but I assure you that other options will also be considered. The Museum will remain open, but in accordance with the Board's vote, it will be more fully integrated into the University's central educational mission."

None of this actually contradicted the January 26 announcement. It seemed more about administrators managing a PR disaster than about their changing their minds. By early February, the school had hired crisis-management public-relations firm Rasky Baerlein for up to $20,000 for two months' work — a sum that, it was reported, would be paid out of the salaries of Reinharz and French.

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Topics: Museum And Gallery , Harvard University, Painting, John Armleder, More