Brandeis prez either feels the heat, backtracks, or...!?

Is the pressure that comes from widespread condemnation getting to Brandeis president Jehuda Reinharz? Or is he backtracking from his original position of selling the Rose Art Museum's art collection? Or has he just realized that he's made a major mistake and that he's in over his head? [Image: Philip Guston's Heir, from the collection of the Rose Art Museum.]

Since announcing that Brandeis was going to monetize its art museum's art collection because it wanted to spare itself the burden of raising money, Reinharz has lurched form interview to new position in a manner that mostly recalls a teenager who is in trouble with his parents and who is making up a story on the fly. To recap:

On Monday, via a university statement: "Today's decision will set in motion a long-term plan to sell the art collection and convert the professional art facility to a teaching, studio, and gallery space for undergraduate and graduate students and faculty."

On Wednesday, via Boston NPR affiliate WBUR: "Reinharz says Brandeis does not intend to sell the entire art collection, just some of the works."

On Wednesday, to the Boston Globe: "We have no particular mandate from the board of trustees as to when to sell, how to sell. If in fact there is a miracle tomorrow morning and the economy turns around and the stock market is up by 45 percent, nothing impels me, nothing impels us, to do anything."

On Wednesday, on NPR's All Things Considered, Reinharz was asked if he planned to sell the entire collection: "Absolutely not. "The decision of the board of trustees did not mandate... how much to sell, when to sell. If we decide to sell, if the economy god help us changes quickly we will need to sell much less or perhaps none of the art."

(Of course, Brandeis "needs" to do nothing. If every non-profit institution in America that had suffered a 25 percent drop in its endowment started selling buildings, and who-knows-what-else, the United States would be one big garage sale. There are ways to be fiscally responsible in a time of market-generated pressure. The cowardly, stupid decision to sell a museum's art collection is not being forced by anything except the idiocy of Brandeis' leadership.)

So Reinharz is feeling the heat -- and, strangely enough, he's let his board off the hook and has assumed total responsibility for the fate of the Rose Art Museum: Reinharz told the Globe that the decision going forward is his, not the board's. (Reinharz also told NPR: "That's the other problem. Many students have parents who lost their jobs or who are unable to pay their tuition." Great, so Reinharz has shifted the burden of responsibility for the university's financial situation and its choice to sell its art collection to the newly jobless. That's somewhere between callous and despicable.) The Massachusetts attorney general and the university's donors should turn up the heat on Reinharz even more.

UPDATE: Time magazine's Richard Lacayo is picking up the same vibes.

In a separate story, Rose Art Museum director Michael Rush knows that there will be problems even if the Rose "wins." The Rose won't be safe until Reinharz is removed from the scene and until the next leadership of the university repudiates Reinharz's scheme. After all, if the university can sell off the art museum's art collection, it can also sell off anything else. Reinharz has put university department, building and monetizable asset in play. (Watch out biology professors. You could be next...)

MAN's Brandeis/Rose Art Museum coverage: A Q&A with Rose director Michael Rush, the myth of the must-sell, five Rose-related questions, artist David Maisel on the Rose.