The Rose Art Museum may look like a dead man walking, but its advocates are still filing last minute appeals. On Monday night in the Lois Foster Wing of the museum, descendants of the museum's founders, Edward and Bertha C. Rose, made a statement denouncing the “plunder” of the museum. There to back them up were former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt, and writer Claire Messud.
Greenblatt made the argument that contemporary art is at the forward edge of a developing culture, and the Rose’s collection keeps the university relevant. Like a library selling its books, the sale of the Rose would stifle Brandeis' voice in the larger cultural conversation.
Looking to John Keats’ poetry, Pinsky posited that art-making creates a shared culture that transcends our individual deaths. He also noted that Harvard, Princeton and Yale, the appointed keepers of this culture in the early twentieth century, often excluded Jews. The founding of Brandeis in 1948 was a new, urgent voice to challenge that triumvirate.
Messud brought the conversation back to the idea that the financial crisis may force a general reappraisal of value. Rather than treating the Rose’s art as currency, it might be time to rethink what we’re buying for all that money.
The night ended on a hopeful note, as Brandeis student Brian Friedberg looked to the future and asked the audience to consider that The Rose might develop a new model for museums in difficult times. It was a lesson the university administration should note; being the champion of a new idea is always more satisfying than picking the corpse of a failed one.
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