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.

< prev 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | next >

Brandeis shutters art museum
Late Monday afternoon, Brandeis University informed leaders of its Rose Art Museum that it would close the institution this summer and auction off the more than 6000 pieces in its renowned collection, which includes major works by Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jasper Johns.
It's a shandeh!
The news that Brandeis University plans to shutter its highly regarded Rose Art Museum and sell its exemplary collection of American art from the 1960s and '70s in order to resolve its budget crisis not only shocked the world of elite higher education, it also stunned the local, national, and international arts communities.
Brandeis President Jehuda Reinharz steps down
Fallout from Bernie Madoff's titanic scheme is still unfolding, as was made clear on this week's 60 Minutes report about the search for billions bilked by the New York Ponzi king.
Wizards and masterpieces
At “Harry Potter: The Exhibition” at the Museum of Science, when a robed attendant places the sorting hat on a visitor’s head and soon after a door whooshes open to reveal the Hogwarts Express, you find yourself filled with the kind of giddy expectation you feel when getting your hands on a Potter book the day it’s released.
Phoenix critic wins grant
It was announced earlier this week that Phoenix contributing writer Greg Cook's art blog, the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research, has been awarded a $30,000 endowment from the Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program, which rewards "commitment to the craft of writing and the advancement of critical discourse on contemporary visual art."
Political Andy?
Was Andy Warhol more politically engaged than he's given credit for?
Slideshow: Final moments at the Rose?
Photos from what could be the final days at the Rose Art Museum
Will Brandeis lose its swagger?
Ethnomusicologically invigorated Brandeis students and alumni are hoping for an outburst of criticism for the probable downsizing of Wayne Marshall.
The thinker at mid century
A long time ago (say 70 years), in a galaxy far, far away (New York), a tired band of rebels ached to be the Next Big Thing.
Interview: Artist, construction worker Susan Eisenberg
In order to shine some light on the inequality – as well as call attention to the strong, talented tradeswomen who wire this country's buildings, lay out piping systems, and fabricate metals – the local artist and poet Susan Eisenberg, herself a pioneering tradeswoman who came into the business in 1978, has unveiled On Equal Terms: Women in Construction 30 Years & Still Organizing at the Adams Gallery at Suffolk University.
Flipping out
Status Quo is assuredly not a breaking crew. They do incorporate some breakin' and krumping in their sets, but, in their own words, they are entertainers first.
Less

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

| More

Most Popular

The Current Issue

Table of Contents

Cover Archive

Masthead | Authors | Contact us

Blogs

Where To Follow Me
Talking Politics | March 24, 2013 at 11:09 AM

Mo Takes His Turn
March 21, 2013 at 12:59 PM

[Q&A] KMFDM's Sascha Konietzko on art, Columbine and having balls
On The Download | March 18, 2013 at 3:22 PM

See this film series: The Belmont World Film Series @ Studio Cinema in Belmont
Outside The Frame | March 18, 2013 at 11:00 AM

See this film: This is Spinal Tap [with post-film talk by expert from Acoustical Society of America] @ the Coolidge
March 17, 2013 at 12:00 PM

ARTICLES BY GREG COOK

A REALLY BIG SHOW! | May 21, 2013
This showcase of tomorrow's-art-stars-today is both invigorating and overwhelming, with work by 194 students.

CLOTHES MAKE THE MAN | May 13, 2013
What does it mean to be a man? That's the question at the heart of this smart, sumptuous exhibit — one of the best shows in the region this year.

MERRY PRANKSTERS | May 07, 2013
Parked out front of Brown University's gray modernist Granoff Center on a recent sunny morning were one of those 15-foot-tall inflatable rats that unions install in front of businesses they're protesting and a limousine sloppily painted to resemble a yellow and black school bus.

ALTERED IMAGES | April 30, 2013
Among the handsome Washington Street storefronts of AS220's renovated Mercantile Block building, with their neo-old-timey signs, is the residents' entrance to the building. It is against AS220's religion to leave any space empty that can be filled with art. So the lobby is the AS220 Resident Gallery, which occupants of the building take turns filling with their stuff.

IN THE CITY | April 23, 2013
One of the distinguishing characteristics of the Providence art scene is how the city itself has been such a rich subject. A decade ago, the city became a galvanizing topic as artists fought to protect the old mills that served as their homes and studios from demolition — with mixed success. But lately, the community's industrial architecture itself has attracted artists' attention.