Deciphering the politics over there is beyond me, but when it was formed, the committee of professors and staff plus student and trustee representatives looked like a fig leaf for Reinharz's hugely controversial plan to close to Rose and sell off the collection. The Reinharz administration has been backtracking publicly since the whole thing blew up in their faces, but the museum staff has been sent packing, and a lawsuit by three overseers that would save the museum and the collection is being vigorously contested by the administration. A committee report nodding to the protesters but ultimately endorsing Reinharz's goals would seem the logical next step.
Now the committee's report is out, and it offers two main recommendations:
1. that the Rose Art Museum remain the Rose Art Museum. It should remain
what it is and what it has been since its beginnings: a university art museum
open to the public;
2. that the University take steps to better integrate the Rose Art Museum into the
broader educational mission of the University.
Number 1 has to be seen as a direct repudiation of Reinharz's goal to close the museum - and by implication it could be seen to also repudiate the idea of selling the collection. But. But.
Number 2 fits Reinharz's stated goal to turn the museum into a teaching center. And there's no Number 3 addressing the collection issue. The committee throws that hot potato back in the laps of trustees:
"The Committee will operate with the understanding that the Board of Trustees, as part of its fiduciary responsibility for Brandeis University, will determine whether or not to sell works of art from the Rose. We assume that whatever decisions the Board makes regarding such sales, there will remain a substantial collection of art to be preserved and made available for research, study, and cultivation."
Not sure why they feel that's safe to assume. But reading the report one comes across passages that could be interpreted as favoring either side. The committee wants want the museum re-staffed, but they also want it to shift its priorities to serve students more and the art world less.
Perhaps most surprising for a museum with one of the best modern art collections in the region is the bold-faced and italicized recommendation at the end of this passage: "Our Committee is in agreement that the Rose should maintain a focus on collecting modern and contemporary art, but that exceptions for exhibitions could be made to accommodate specific curricular needs or artistic opportunities relevant to the Brandeis community. We recommend that further consideration be given to the Rose’s practice of exhibiting exclusively modern and contemporary art."
Honestly, someone better versed in the Brandeis community's internal politics will have to sort this out. A first quick skim of the report makes it seem a document that supporters the Rose would like. But the more closely you read, the more the carefully crafted committee-speak seems to reach a conclusion somewhere in the middle. Is the idea to keep the museum open in name, while largely changing its role on campus as Reinharz planned? And what does that say about the future of the collection? My Magic 8 ball says the outlook remains cloudy.
According to the letter sent to "the Brandeis community" by Provost Marty Wyngaarden Krauss - not Reinharz, one notes - the report will be discussed byt the trustees' Executive Committee this week and at the meeting of the full board on October 28-29.
The Globe's take on the report is here.
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