Panel: Keep the Rose Art Museum Open

Mixed news for local art lovers. Brandeis University's committee on the Rose Art Museum issued its report today, urging the university to keep the museum open.

The future of the museum has been in doubt since January, when reports first surfaced describing Brandeis's efforts to close the museum and sell off its art. It was terrible publicity for the school, which even harrassed a blogger in order to keep it quiet.

Since then, the university allowed director Michael Rush's contract to expire, let go of most of the museum's staff, and hired a part-time replacement for Rush. The Museum is essentially in limbo. According to the Globe:

The report calls on the university to immediately expand staffing at the Rose, hiring a full-time museum director who would also teach courses, as well as an education director so the visual arts could be better integrated into Brandeis’s academic departments.

The crucial question of the museum's estimated $350 million art collection went unanswered by the committee's report, which left open the possibility that the university could sell off pieces of art as it saw fit, provided that it got recommendations from the museum director and art historians first.

Members of the Rose's board of overseers still have a pending lawsuit, which they filed in July, that would prevent the university from selling any works of art from the museum's collection. Brandeis recently moved to dismiss the suit, arguing that the plaintiffs lack standing. There is a hearing scheduled for October 13, and the Rose will open a survey of its collection, the largest in New England of modern and contemporary art, on October 28.