Tomorrow night, there’s a special event at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University: it’s not only the reopening after a four-month renovation. It is also the turning of the page on its turbulent recent past, and — Brandeis President Frederick Lawrence (below) hopes — a beginning of a process to restore the Rose and even perhaps elevate its position at the university.
There are skeptics out there. Still bruised by the battle set off in January, 2009 when the university tried to turn the Rose into an arts center, they are withholding judgment about his sincerity.
I understand that. But after a couple of conversations with Lawrence in the last six months, I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt. As I write in The Art Newspaper, which posted my article online today, the timing of tomorrow night’s celebration is significant:
“The fact that we are having the reopenings during the fall board of trustees meeting is designed to raise the profile of the Rose in the university community,” he says. It was these same trustees, mostly, who in January 2009 voted to sell the Rose’s famed collection of modern and contemporary art to keep the university from shrinking drastically after the 2008 markets’ crash.
The university has also stepped up its search for a new director, enlisting three well-known graduates to serve on an advisory committee. One would hope that Lawrence knows better than to embarass them by reverting to the university’s previous view, under a different president, of the Rose as cash cow.
Read more details here.