AAMD on Brandeis: (Self-)Congratulation and Applause (plus more on Fisk/Stieglitz)

AAMD's Dan Monroe's proliferating signature (on letter to Brandeis University)

Only a month into his presidency of the Association of Art Museum Directors, Dan Monroe, director of the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA, has fired off another missive to a president of an institution of higher learning.

But this time (as distinguished from the recent condemnation of Randolph College's deplorable deaccessions), he's dispatched a letter of praise, not censure.

In statement sent Friday to Brandeis University board chairman Malcolm Sherman and President Frederick Lawrence, Monroe wrote:

On behalf of the North American art museum community and the Association of Art Museum Directors, I congratulate you and applaud your decision to reaffirm Brandeis University's commitment to the Rose Art Museum and to preclude the sale of works of art from the museum collection to provide support for University or Museum programs or operations....

Your decision to rescind consideration of sales of works of art from the Rose Art Museum collection to support operations and to reaffirm the University's commitment to the Museum as an integral part of the University protects and benefits the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis, and the national art museum community.

But in the letter's conclusion, AAMD appears to be trying to take some of the credit for this happy resolution:

We appreciate your willingness to engage in dialogue with representatives of AAMD throughout the past two or more years and we stand ready to assist you in any way we reasonably can to affirm and support your decision.

Actually Lawrence, who spearheaded the rededication of the university to the mission of its museum and its art collection, has been on the job for only six months, not for "the past two or more years." And he's an arts aficionado who needs no convincing about the art's importance to the university: When I visited the Rose last December, Roy Dawes, the museum's director of operations, told me that Lawrence, who had already toured the Rose prior to his January inauguration, was clearly "very involved in the arts community. I enjoyed looking at art with him. He was very insightful."

During my interview with Brandeis' president last week, he struck me as not only an arts enthusiast but also a smart manager, who needed no prodding or assistance from AAMD in handling this contretemps: He already shares the same values about deaccessions and knows full well how to build consensus. Would that Randolph College and Fisk University were favored with such effective and culturally attuned presidents.

Speaking of which, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools issued a statement on June 30, explaining its June 23 decision to continue Fisk on "warning status," which "applies to the entire institution." This means that the university's accreditation could be rescinded if SACS representatives are dissatisfied during their next on-site evaluation, this December.

Among the criteria on which Fisk has been found deficient is the requirement to demonstrate "that it has qualified administrative and academic officers."

Last November, a group of concerned alumni sent a letter to Fisk's board, calling for the resignation of the university's president, Hazel O'Leary, who spearheaded the in-litigation proposed sale of a half share of the university's Stieglitz Collection to Alice Walton's in-construction Crystal Bridges Museum. One of the reasons for the alums' loss of confidence was O'Leary's handling of this:

We are deeply concerned by, and opposed to, the Board-approved decision to seek court approval to sell a 50% interest in the Alfred Stieglitz Collection....

The present effort to gain court approval to contravene the terms of such a commitment---Georgia O'Keeffe's gifting the Stieglitz Collection and other works of art to Fisk University---erodes the faith and trust that must be invested in Fisk University, in the institution's stewards and senior administrators, to gain the confidence of those able and willing to make substantial contributions to ensuring Fisk's future as a viable and flourishing institution of higher education.

Furthermore, we are convinced that this effort in court---a multi-year, resource-draining, morale-depleting public relations fiasco---punctuated by very recent testimony in court by Ms. O'Leary that unless Fisk is allowed to sell the 50 percent interest in the Stieglitz Collection for the proposed $30 million, the University will have to close---is a manifestation of abject failure on the part of President O'Leary, and of the Board of Trustees:

---Failure to protect the interests of Fisk University in entering into a Joint Ownership Agreement with the Crystal Bridges Museum, a critical matter that had to be corrected at the direction of the judge hearing the case regarding the proposed sharing agreement

---Failure to serve as a proper moral and educational leader of the University by sitting in silence, in apparent agreement, while the attorney hired to argue the case for the sharing agreement made the educationally bankrupt and morally egregious declaration [my link, not theirs] that art created by Caucasians is of no relevance to the education of Fisk's African American students, only art created by African American artists.