As the Valparaiso University campus grappled Thursday with news about the pending sale of cornerstone artwork from the Brauer Museum of Art for dorm improvements, four organizations representing North America’s art museums issued a statement condemning the university’s decision and the irreparable harm they said it will cause.
The angst comes a day after Jose Padilla, the university’s president, announced in a campus wide email that the artwork will be sold to generate funds for improvements to dorms for first-year students.
“Nobody thinks it’s reasonable,” said Aimee Tomasek, associate professor of communication and visual arts, adding her students are outraged about news of the sale and are emailing Padilla to tell him so. “They are also a little unnerved that they were not communicated with about whether these paintings were important to them or not.”
Though Padilla didn’t specify which artwork is pegged for sale, Dick Brauer, the museum’s founding director, and John Ruff, a senior research professor in the English department long affiliated with the museum, told the Post-Tribune the paintings are “Rust Red Hills,” perhaps the museum’s famous work, by Georgia O’Keeffe; Frederic E. Church’s “Mountain Landscape”; and “The Silver Vale and the Golden Gate” by Childe Hassam.
Collectively, the paintings are worth several million dollars. Brauer has threatened to have his name removed from the museum if the sales go forward.
“We are saddened by Richard Brauer’s request to distance himself from our museum,” a university spokesperson said in an email Thursday. “Regardless, we want to express our appreciation to Professor Brauer for his time, service, and dedication to the museum and to Valparaiso University.”
The email went on to note that the university is still completing due diligence that precedes and is a condition of such a transaction.
Gretchen Buggeln, an art history and humanities professor, said she was part of a faculty group working behind the scenes to try to stop the sale of the artwork, which she called a violation of public trust and long-standing donor agreements. The paintings were purchased through a restrictive trust.
“That is legal but it doesn’t make it right. It is troubling for a university that values ethical leadership,” she said, adding to think the administration would sell the artwork without notice to the campus community “is shocking.”
The university’s function is to provide an educational experience first and foremost, she said, adding that extracurricular activities, sports and residential life are “important but not the reason we exist.”
She decried the diminishing of the performing and visual arts at the university in recent years, something that will only continue with the sale of art from the museum.
“(Padilla) still doesn’t recognize the damage this sale would have to the viability of the museum,” Buggeln said.
The well-regarded museum, said Tomasek, who has spent several years helping recruit students, is one of the features that helps draw students to campus.
“The Brauer Museum is one of those shining points you dangle in front of them because it’s so tremendous,” and an asset that other campuses don’t have, she said.
The museum’s director, Jonathan Canning, is a member of the Association of Academic and Museum Galleries and the museum is an unaffiliated member of the American Alliance of Museums.
Those two groups, along with the Association of Art Museum Directors and the Association of Art Museum Curators, issued a statement that they are “strongly opposed” to the plans “in order to fund capital investments on campus.”
University art museums, the statement notes, have a responsibility to engage in the same ethical conduct as the world’s most prestigious institutions, and are not exempt from acting ethically or permitted to “ignore issues of public trust and use the museum’s collections as disposable financial assets.”
“This remains a fundamental ethical principle of the museum field, one which all institutions are obligated to respect: in no event shall funds from deaccessioned works be used for anything other than support for a museum’s collections, either through acquisitions or the direct care of art,” the statement notes.
Collectively, the organizations said they hope the university reconsiders its decision and finds another solution to raise funds “without resorting to the selling of works that can never be recovered, to the great detriment of current and future students and community members.”
Padilla has inferred in communications about the art sale that the museum and its artwork are “not part of our strategic plan and our core mission of educating students,” a point students are rebuking by creating memes with the hashtag #artisacoreresource on Instagram.
One features eyes from the museum’s artwork with the phrase “We See What You are Doing, Padilla” and another features a mock-up of the Chapel of the Resurrection, plywood over its famed stained glass, and the caption “University to Sell Stained Glass Windows in Auction After They Were Deemed ‘Not a Core Resource.'”
alavalley@chicagotribune.com
