Brandeis committee: Keep Rose a public museum

Brandeis University should keep its Rose Art Museum a public museum, but better integrate it into the school’s educational mission, a Brandeis committee studying the situation recommends in its 27-page final report (pdf) dated Sept. 18, 2009.

“The Rose Art Museum [should] 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,” reports the Future of the Rose Committee, an 11-member advisory board made up of Brandeis faculty, administrators, two students, a Brandeis trustee, and Roy Dawes, director of operations at the Rose.

“The report will be discussed at the meeting of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees this week and at the meeting of the full Board of Trustees scheduled for October 28-29,” Brandeis Provost Marty Wyngaarden Krauss wrote in an email to the Brandeis community today. “Later this semester, I will look forward to announcing the university’s plans regarding specific recommendations of the report, in light of the administration’s review, the Board’s review and community comments.”

Additional committee recommendations for the Rose include:

• Greater faculty and staff input into the operations of the museum.
  
• Better showcase the Rose’s permanent collection.
  
• Consider no longer focusing exclusively on Modern and contemporary art.
  
• Present faculty and alumni exhibitions, and consider offering student shows.
  
• Increase the Rose’s estimated 11,000 to 14,000 annual visitors.

Note: I’m just beginning to dig through the report. More to come.

Previously:
Dec. 23: Rose freezes curator search
Jan. 26: Brandeis to close Rose
Jan. 27: Update: Brandeis to close Rose, sell art
Jan. 27: Brandeis president’s e-mail on Rose
Jan. 27: Brandeis’s money
Jan. 27: AG on Brandeis's plans
Jan. 29: Brandeis’s liquidator-in-chief
Jan. 29: The first painting Brandeis should pawn
Jan. 29: Question: Brandeis financial management?
Feb. 5: Brandeis won’t close Rose?
Feb. 5: Will defunct Rose replace defunct Safra Center plan?
Feb. 9: Open discussion at the Rose tomorrow
Feb. 11: How do you solve Brandeis’s budget crisis?
March 16: Rose family objects to closing Rose museum
March 16: What is the Rose family saying?
May 15: The end of the Rose?
May 20: Voices from the Rose.
May 20: Rose collection treasures.
July 27: Rose overseers sue to preserve museum, stop sale of art: If museum can’t be saved, they say give art to new Rose Preservation Fund.
July 31: Key weaknesses in the Rose suit.
Sept. 15: Brandeis seeks dismissal of Rose lawsuit.