Rose Art Museum
Encyclopedia
The Rose Art Museum, founded in 1961, is a part of Brandeis University
in Waltham, Massachusetts
, USA. Named after benefactors Edward and Bertha Rose, it offers temporary exhibitions, and it displays and houses works of art from the Brandeis University art collections. The museum's collection includes about 6,000 works, including paintings by such artists as Jasper Johns
, Roy Lichtenstein
, Robert Rauschenberg
, and Andy Warhol
.
, and with a small grant of $50,000 from collectors Leon Mnuchin and his wife, Harriet Gevirtz-Mnuchin, launched a collection with iconic works by Johns, Rauschenberg, Warhol, Willem De Kooning
and several others—21 works with a ceiling of $5,000 for any one piece bought with the grant. The museum’s exhibition and cultural programming have centered on leading contemporary artists, often giving these artists their first museum exhibitions: Frank Stella
, Kiki Smith
, Nam June Paik
, and Dana Schutz
among them. The Rose Art Museum has the leading collection of modern
and contemporary art
in New England
.
With approximately 13000 square feet (1,207.7 m²) of exhibition space in three galleries, the Rose Art Museum offers 9-12 exhibitions a year, most of which are organized by the Rose Art Museum curatorial team. The New York Times
has taken notice of important exhibitions at the museum, praising an "eminently worthwhile" David von Schlegell
retrospective in 1968; calling a 1969 exhibit of sculpture by James Rosatti "an event of some importance"; and devoting a full-length article to a 1981 Helen Frankenthaler
exhibition.
The museum recently unveiled the design by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban
for a new wing, which was to be devoted to exhibition of art from the permanent collection.
Thirteen thousand annual Rose Art Museum visitors represent the Brandeis community, the greater Boston area, and both national and international museum-goers. The Rose Art Museum operates year round and is open Tuesday through Sunday, 12-5pm.
, two by Daumier, two by Vuillard, and one by Toulouse-Lautrec. The announcement drew sharp criticism. Arnold L. Lehman, President of the American Association of Art Directors called it "like selling one of your children to feed the others," and the Association issued an official criticism of the plan. Mary Gardner Neill of the Yale University Art Gallery
said "We still oppose what they're doing, because it's wrong to convert collections into cash.... If a museum sells art, the proceeds must go to replenish the collection with other works of art."
Nevertheless, on November 6, 1991, eleven works were auctioned off at Christie's
, bringing in $3.65 million which Brandeis said would be used for "an endowment that will pay for acquisitions, education and conservation."
office has approval powers over certain actions of state nonprofit institutions, and Attorney General Martha Coakley
said she plans to conduct a detailed review of the decision relative to wills and agreements made with donors. Nealon has claimed the attorney general had "approved the legality of closing the Rose and selling its art,", but the attorney general's office claimed they were only informed about the decision, not consulted. An early estimate of the total value of the collection was in the $350–400 million range, though values may be less due to a flagging art market. The university's endowment
was $700 million before being hit by the drop in financial markets. Several of the university's large donors were reportedly particularly hard hit due to investment with Bernard Madoff
.
On July 27, 2009, three of the museum's overseers filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts to halt the closing and sale of works. The three, including a member of the Rose family, contended that the planned closing contradicts the museum's "charitable intentions", violates the trust of those who donated art to the institution, and reneges on "Brandeis's promises that the Rose would be maintained in perpetuity."
By June 30, 2011, under the new leadership of Brandeis University President Frederick Lawrence, the lawsuit that had been brought against the university to prevent the closing of the Rose was settled. The museum remains open, and no works of art were sold to support university operations.
.
Brandeis University
Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...
in Waltham, Massachusetts
Waltham, Massachusetts
Waltham is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, was an early center for the labor movement, and major contributor to the American Industrial Revolution. The original home of the Boston Manufacturing Company, the city was a prototype for 19th century industrial city planning,...
, USA. Named after benefactors Edward and Bertha Rose, it offers temporary exhibitions, and it displays and houses works of art from the Brandeis University art collections. The museum's collection includes about 6,000 works, including paintings by such artists as Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns, Jr. is an American contemporary artist who works primarily in painting and printmaking.-Life:Born in Augusta, Georgia, Jasper Johns spent his early life in Allendale, South Carolina with his paternal grandparents after his parents' marriage failed...
, Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein was a prominent American pop artist. During the 1960s his paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City and along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and others he became a leading figure in the new art movement...
, Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. Rauschenberg is well-known for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations...
, and Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
.
History
Sam Hunter, the first director of the Rose Art Museum, came to Brandeis from the Museum of Modern ArtMuseum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
, and with a small grant of $50,000 from collectors Leon Mnuchin and his wife, Harriet Gevirtz-Mnuchin, launched a collection with iconic works by Johns, Rauschenberg, Warhol, Willem De Kooning
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands....
and several others—21 works with a ceiling of $5,000 for any one piece bought with the grant. The museum’s exhibition and cultural programming have centered on leading contemporary artists, often giving these artists their first museum exhibitions: Frank Stella
Frank Stella
Frank Stella is an American painter and printmaker, significant within the art movements of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction.-Biography:...
, Kiki Smith
Kiki Smith
Kiki Smith is an American artist classified as a feminist artist, a movement with beginnings in the twentieth century...
, Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik
Nam June Paik was a Korean American artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the first video artist....
, and Dana Schutz
Dana Schutz
Dana Schutz is a painter in New York.She graduated with a BFA the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2000 and an MFA from Columbia University in 2002. She grew up in Livonia, Michigan a suburb of Detroit and graduated in 1995 from Adlai E...
among them. The Rose Art Museum has the leading collection of modern
Modern art
Modern art includes artistic works produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the style and philosophy of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of...
and contemporary art
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
in New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
.
With approximately 13000 square feet (1,207.7 m²) of exhibition space in three galleries, the Rose Art Museum offers 9-12 exhibitions a year, most of which are organized by the Rose Art Museum curatorial team. The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
has taken notice of important exhibitions at the museum, praising an "eminently worthwhile" David von Schlegell
David von Schlegell
David Von Schlegell was an American abstract artist and sculptor.-Biography:David Von Schlegell was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1920, the son of American impressionist artist William von Schlegell. He studied at the University of Michigan in the 1940s, and then entered the United States Air Force...
retrospective in 1968; calling a 1969 exhibit of sculpture by James Rosatti "an event of some importance"; and devoting a full-length article to a 1981 Helen Frankenthaler
Helen Frankenthaler
Helen Frankenthaler is an American abstract expressionist painter. She is a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work in six decades she has spanned several generations of abstract painters while continuing to produce vital and ever-changing new work...
exhibition.
The museum recently unveiled the design by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban
Shigeru Ban
Shigeru Ban is an accomplished Japanese and international architect, most famous for his innovative work with paper, particularly recycled cardboard paper tubes used to quickly and efficiently house disaster victims...
for a new wing, which was to be devoted to exhibition of art from the permanent collection.
Thirteen thousand annual Rose Art Museum visitors represent the Brandeis community, the greater Boston area, and both national and international museum-goers. The Rose Art Museum operates year round and is open Tuesday through Sunday, 12-5pm.
1991 sale of works from the collection
In 1991, Brandeis announced a plan to sell fourteen works of art from the Rose, including three by RenoirRenoir
-People with the surname Renoir :* Pierre-Auguste Renoir , French painter* Pierre Renoir , French actor and son of Pierre-Auguste Renoir* Jean Renoir , French film director and son of Pierre-Auguste Renoir...
, two by Daumier, two by Vuillard, and one by Toulouse-Lautrec. The announcement drew sharp criticism. Arnold L. Lehman, President of the American Association of Art Directors called it "like selling one of your children to feed the others," and the Association issued an official criticism of the plan. Mary Gardner Neill of the Yale University Art Gallery
Yale University Art Gallery
The Yale University Art Gallery houses a significant and encyclopedic collection of art in several buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Although it embraces all cultures and periods, the Gallery possesses especially renowned collections of early Italian painting,...
said "We still oppose what they're doing, because it's wrong to convert collections into cash.... If a museum sells art, the proceeds must go to replenish the collection with other works of art."
Nevertheless, on November 6, 1991, eleven works were auctioned off at Christie's
Christie's
Christie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766...
, bringing in $3.65 million which Brandeis said would be used for "an endowment that will pay for acquisitions, education and conservation."
Planned closing
On January 26, 2009, Brandeis University announced its plans to close the museum by the end of the summer in response to the global financial crisis of 2008–2009. University spokesman Dennis Nealon called the surprise announcement a "hard decision," but said, "The bottom line is that the students, the faculty and core academic mission come first. Trustees had to look at the college's assets and came to a decision to maintain that fundamental commitment to teaching." The move was criticized by the museum's director and board, numerous art-world figures and some donors to the museum. The Massachusetts attorney general'sAttorney General
In most common law jurisdictions, the attorney general, or attorney-general, is the main legal advisor to the government, and in some jurisdictions he or she may also have executive responsibility for law enforcement or responsibility for public prosecutions.The term is used to refer to any person...
office has approval powers over certain actions of state nonprofit institutions, and Attorney General Martha Coakley
Martha Coakley
Martha Mary Coakley is the Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Prior to serving as Attorney General, she was District Attorney of Middlesex County, Massachusetts from 1999 to 2007....
said she plans to conduct a detailed review of the decision relative to wills and agreements made with donors. Nealon has claimed the attorney general had "approved the legality of closing the Rose and selling its art,", but the attorney general's office claimed they were only informed about the decision, not consulted. An early estimate of the total value of the collection was in the $350–400 million range, though values may be less due to a flagging art market. The university's endowment
Financial endowment
A financial endowment is a transfer of money or property donated to an institution. The total value of an institution's investments is often referred to as the institution's endowment and is typically organized as a public charity, private foundation, or trust....
was $700 million before being hit by the drop in financial markets. Several of the university's large donors were reportedly particularly hard hit due to investment with Bernard Madoff
Bernard Madoff
Bernard Lawrence "Bernie" Madoff is a former American businessman, stockbroker, investment advisor, and financier. He is the former non-executive chairman of the NASDAQ stock market, and the admitted operator of a Ponzi scheme that is considered to be the largest financial fraud in U.S...
.
On July 27, 2009, three of the museum's overseers filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts to halt the closing and sale of works. The three, including a member of the Rose family, contended that the planned closing contradicts the museum's "charitable intentions", violates the trust of those who donated art to the institution, and reneges on "Brandeis's promises that the Rose would be maintained in perpetuity."
By June 30, 2011, under the new leadership of Brandeis University President Frederick Lawrence, the lawsuit that had been brought against the university to prevent the closing of the Rose was settled. The museum remains open, and no works of art were sold to support university operations.
October 2011 Reopening
After a period of renovation, the Rose Art Museum reopened October 25, 2011 after a brief closing period to undergo major renovations. This coincided with the 50th anniversary of the museum, which was also celebrated, including a speech by Presidence Frederick Lawrence and artist James RosenquistJames Rosenquist
James Rosenquist is an American artist and one of the protagonists in the pop-art movement.-Background and education:...
.