If you want good press, it helps to be on the side of angels — as Michael Rush was last year when, as director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis, he mobilized against the University’s attempt to close the Rose and sell its collection.
Rush, you’ll recall, did not have his contract renewed and since then, well — you can read about what he’s been up to in today’s Boston Globe (here). It was, ahem, a Valentine on the occasion of Rush’s guest-curating of Virtuoso Illusion: Cross-Dressing and the New Media Avant-Garde at MIT’s List Visual Arts Center, among other things. In the article, he reveals a few more weird goings-on, last year, at Brandeis.
Which all jibes with the latest on the Rose itself, as recounted in a Feb. 12 article in The Brandeis Hoot, which followed new budget cuts at the university. It says that the students speaking out to save the museum have felt intimidated and that the Rose is still for sale:
This particular fine arts student is sitting in the atrium of the Shapiro Campus Center with her friend. Above them hangs one of their hand-made banners quoting board of trustee member Meyer Koplow ’72 saying “some of the solution [to the budget gap] will come from realizing value ultimately from some of the art at the Rose [Art Museum].”
The article says the Rose has only a sole employee at the moment, the director of operations, but quotes University Provost Marty Krauss saying in an email “that the university is currently searching for a new museum registrar, collections manager and educational director.” But, the Hoot says, the Rose has stopped lending art and will have just one exhibition during this academic year.
The lawsuit filed by Rose trustees against the university, meanwhile, is set to go to trial next December. That’s a long way off, and a lot of time for new developments.
Photo: Courtesy Brandeis University