If you read the papers on Friday morning, before getting away for Memorial Day weekend, you know that Brandeis University has a new plan to raise money from the Rose Art Museum collection. The Boston Globe’s article reveals that the administration has engaged Sotheby’s to explore “options other than sale” of works from the collection, as a way of plugging the university’s budget gap.
Sotheby’s, which approached Brandeis, appears to be thinking about a loan-show tour, perhaps like the one the Barnes Foundation did a few years back. Brandeis, for its part, said discussions were in initial stages and it would be premature to come to any conclusions.
So I won’t. But none of this is the most interesting part of the story. That would be the quote Globe reporter Geoff Edgers ended his story with this:
Brandeis has to set its priorities and decide how the museum fits into the long-term purpose of the university. They would be fools not to explore this.
The source? Not some unschooled philistine, but Peter C. Marzio, director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Marzio is now the elder statesman of museum directors, having taken his post in 1982. The others in his “class” have are all gone: Philippe de Montebello retired last year, Marc Wilson is stepping down from the directorship of the Nelson-Atkins Museum as of this week, and Anne D’Harnoncourt, who took the top job at the Philadelphia Museum in 1982, died in 2008.
Marzio is secure in his job, and his skin. He may have a bit of Texas in him, too.Or he may figure that, given his stature, he can afford to break some eggs, offer new thinking, get practical — like Nixon going to China.
Good for him. I’d like it if the Rose were preserved as is (university officials have told me that it continues to make loans, by the way). That may yet happen. But loans are better than sales anyday.
But assuming he has been quoted accurately, Marzio is a breath of fresh air, in a community that doesn’t tend to welcome new ideas that go against the “museum culture.” Just try, for example, talking about the need for different museum hours matching changing lifestyles…see how far you get.
As Marzio said about the museum community right before the quote above: “They will be against anything except the status quo.”
Photo Credit: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston