Rose in the Red, Brandeis is Blue: Why Closing the Rose is a Brilliant Move
Einstein, a key figure in Brandeis’ founding, would have approved of this move.
Consider this my spirited rebuttal to Greg’s post from Monday.
Brandeis University e-mailed its alumni on Monday, January 26th to inform them of the decision to close the Rose Art Museum. This immediately struck me as a brilliant and courageous move to cut dead weight at an institution reeling from faith in the stock market and the fallout of the Bernie Madoff fiasco. Over the course of the next week, I learned that I was pretty much the only almunus in university history who felt that way (though surely there must be some alumni on the unanimous Board, no?) and that everyone was in a fervor rarely found among Brandeisians not discussing Israeli-Palestinian politics. What happened?
And then I remembered the nature of college campuses and student bodies and Brandeis in particular. And it all made at least a little more sense to me. Still, not much overall.
So I’m going to attempt to engage the question from all the angles and rebut the serious allegations so many alumni, including friend and fellow-Mepper Greg, have made against the Rose closure. I may even employ some of what we debaters like to call “line-by-line analysis”. But first, a few general arguments…
1. Brandeis Needed to Make Cuts
I think this is perhaps the round-winning premise right here. Because frankly none of the discussions I’ve seen among alumni have seriously engaged this issue. If you’re going to argue that closing the Rose was a bad idea, you have to be able to point out what you believe should have been cut instead. Because Brandeis is (perhaps a little late, but finally) taking this economic situation seriously and being serious about their endowment and ensuring that the university doesn’t disappear in twenty years. Which is – see the Einstein picture – brilliant. Or perhaps the bare minimum of intelligence – your choice.
I don’t think I need to spend a lot of time explaining why Brandeis needed to start saving money fast. One of the biggest victims of the Madoff fraud was the Carl & Ruth Shapiro Family Foundation, which just happens to be the #1 all-time donor to Brandeis. Other significant donors were caught up in the same maelstrom. Everyone in America has been losing money hand over fist as the stock market went from being a presumed 15% annual CD to actually being risky without giving sufficiently blatant notice.
And so Brandeis’ only alternative to cutting was to raise tuitions. And if you’re going to plant your flag on raising tuitions into a recession/depression when Brandeis already offers arguably the most overpriced post-secondary education in America, well then hats off to you. But you’re not going to win this round.
2. Resale Value
So as long as we’re all together on Brandeis needing to cut something, the only task left is to prove why the Rose Art Museum is the absolute best possible thing to cut. And it is, big time.
The biggest, most obvious argument here is that the Rose Art Museum is one of exactly two locations on the entire Brandeis campus that contains significant stock of resalable items. The other is the Library.
I hope no one out there thinks that an art museum is more essential to a general education university than a library.
And even there, heads-up, a whole bunch of used books pale in value when compared to a carefully collected amalgamation of fine art.
There is nothing else that could be closed and then resold at any significant cash value. Are you going to bulldoze East Quad and sell chunks of concrete, Berlin Wall style, to sentimental alumni? Maybe stickpinned East Bugs in shadowboxes for people’s home or office? Old computers and scientific equipment? I heard that stuff goes for great prices used. Maybe you could sell professor’s contracts to hungry state schools or the rights to the next TV show an alumni develops?
There’s simply nothing else.
So why is resale value important? It means you can cut, pound for pound, far less than you would otherwise have to cut, because you’re recouping the losses as you cut. So really, if you don’t cut the Rose, you’re going to have to find two things of Rose-budget-size to chop instead of one, or maybe even three. Think the bowls-of-cereal vs. Total commercials here. And if you think ‘Deis alumni kicked up a fuss about closing an art museum they never visited when they were enrolled, imagine the fury over clubs or sports or classes – things that they actually used.
3. WTF is an Art Museum Doing on a College Campus?
Seriously. Someone tell me. I never understood it then and I don’t understand it now.
This whole progression seems to me like someone sticking a pole in their back because they think it’s vaguely decorative and then getting accustomed to it for years because “it’s always been there”. And somebody walks up and says “we have to cut something from you – looks like that pole is pretty out of place” and then the guy screams and cries because he’s so used to the pole, instead saying they should chop off all his fingers.
I mean, sure, it’s maybe better than a pole in the back. It’s nice to have an art museum. A couple alumni have outlandishly claimed that they chose to study at Brandeis because of the Rose. I doubt it (did anyone ever claim this before 1/26/09?), but okay, you lose one or two really art-inclined students. (As opposed to, say, cutting scholarships and losing hundreds of students who actually attend Brandeis primarily because of the scholarship they got, which is one of the ways Brandeis is strategically able to compete with objectively better schools.)
It’s a little shiny jewel in the campus to have a shmancy place to hold events. (Truly, this is mostly what the Rose was used for… if you are an alumni who actually set foot in the Rose, wasn’t it primarily/only for some dance or something that was held there? Be honest.) It’s nice to have art works that people have to schlep out to Waltham to see for a pittance. But seriously, is this even the best place, objectively, to house this art?
I just fundamentally don’t understand why it’s even that great for an art program to have a fine art museum. Yes, you can get a closer look at some fine art during the relatively few hours the museum is open without getting out of your PJ’s. Seems like a luxury item at best to me.
4. Location Location Location
I would be a whole lot more sympathetic to arguments about this closure hurting the art program if Brandeis were located in central Nebraska. But ‘Deis is 10 miles outside of BOSTON.
You may remember Boston from such things as being a cultural mecca, having the Museum of Fine Arts, having countless additional art museums and galleries, and being a few hours from New York City. It’s arguably the number two metropolis for art in America, possibly in the top ten in the world, and four hours from the a contender for #1 in both categories.
It’s not like you have to take an all-day Greyhound to see some fine art in the flesh. Or even particularly modern collections thereof. Sure, if your university is in Wyoming or American Samoa or Greenland, go ahead and build an art museum. (Though still, I would argue that you should still be an art school to justify this, but I digress.) Your students will be horribly uncultured without whatever you put on campus. But in Boston? Are you kidding?
5. Advancement of Art Education
Oh yes, this argument flows to my side of the house as well!
What the opponents of Brandeis closing the Rose don’t want you to realize is that the space for the museum itself is going to be converted into a fine-arts teaching center with studio space and an exhibition gallery!!!
Yes, that’s right, this move actually advances the educational experience of art students at Brandeis, at the expense of access to a few valued pieces. This is not slash-n-burn time at the Old Arts Corral. This is not selling out the art teachers to hire a basketball coach. This is actually putting undergraduate education ahead of reputation, a rare and splendored move for a university in today’s times. Brandeis should be getting applause from artistic alumni rather than the heaping helpings of week-old fruit they’ve received thus far.
Seriously, go interview those people and ask them to compare having a well designed modern indoor space to paint (especially in Waltham’s climate) and learn about art against being able to walk from their dorm to look at a small exhibition of famous artists’ work. Having a dynamic gallery-type space in which to learn, create, and display their own work is an actual asset that puts Brandeis’ art program ahead for this exchange rather than behind.
Let’s see what’s left of Greg’s rant now…
This is indicative of a very, very bad trend: when you get in trouble financially, don’t look to the places where you’re financially strongest for help. Don’t go to the richest vein to mine.
Why isn’t this a place where you’re the strongest? Cross-apply my analysis re: resale value. I think a big collection of rarely displayed fine art is about as rich a vein as you’re going to find at Brandeis, unless there’s gold under Volen or something.
No, when you’re in trouble, completely obliterate something which doesn’t bring in a whole lot of money and the defenders of which will therefore squawk the least.
Again, not obliterating the actual arts program, just the art collected itself. And not obliterating that, but selling it. It would be much worse to have a bonfire of the contents of the Rose Art Museum, I’ll grant.
Also, hard to imagine anyone squawking more than I’ve heard in the time subsequent to this announcement.
It’s the opposite of trimming the fat…this is cutting into the muscle first and seeing what happens.
No, cutting into the muscle would be chopping a program that’s a known asset of Brandeis’. Which would probably be a science or pre-med program. That’s where Brandeis has made a name for itself and flexes its strength – cutting there would indeed be insane.
Since it tends to be the business people who dominate Brandeis’s Board of Trustees who make decisions like this, I find this way of looking at things astonishing (though maybe I shouldn’t, given the way Wall Street conducted itself over the past decade)–I thought the whole business mantra is to cut the bloated areas, not remove from places where there is nothing left to, well, remove.
Except for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of art.
It’s always the arts. Always. Every time, on any level. When in doubt, attack the arts. Low on funds? Cut the music program. Can’t make ends meet? Get rid of the art studio. Balance in the red? The heck with the theater program.
See, this is exactly what this isn’t. It’s what it looks like at first glance, if one doesn’t realize that the space is staying in the arts program and that this decision was made in lieu of cutting faculty or classes in the arts program. It’s not your typical slashing of arts to protect sports or some similar decision that high schools make in these situations like clockwork. It’s a very smart analysis of a gold mine that Brandeis happens to have collected that is utterly tangential to the business of educating students. The arts program, despite a hit to reputation, actually thrives under this decision. They aren’t cutting theater, they aren’t cutting music, but they would probably have to if they didn’t have a whole bunch of paintings to sell.
From middle school to research university, the script is the same: cut the arts to save money while pontificating about how difficult a decision it was, how much it pains you to do this, how truly necessary it is for the institution’s survival, etc., etc.
I believe Jehuda’s sincerity here – I really do. I highly doubt he wants his legacy to be chopping out institutions that have been at Brandeis a long time. From his speech on September 11th to his treatment of the debate team, I’ve always found Jehuda to be remarkably smart and sincere. But maybe that’s just me.
All this despite the fact, in Brandeis’s case, that how necessary this actually was is very much in question (given the utter surprise this came as to the museum’s board, director (check out his statement if you don’t believe me), faculty and students, it can’t have been in the works for that long, unless the university was planning this secretly for a while and is now lying through its teeth),
Well, this is the fundamental question – is it necessary to cut? As someone who spends his days analyzing what cuts we need to make at a non-profit foundation with a formerly sizable endowment that’s evaporating ever more rapidly, I think it’s probably necessary for Brandeis to cut. Again, I trust them here. Even if they’re being a bit over-cautious, I think it’s brilliant and necessary to be over-cautious when facing this magnitude of bottomless pit type downturn. As my CEO explained when announcing layoffs the other day, organizations that don’t cut in a planful way ahead of when they need to end up cutting chaotically and painfully later than they should have. I like Brandeis being on this side of the fence.
As far as the speed with which this was done, have you seen how fast decisions are moving these days? Would you have believed a year ago today a third of what’s unfolded since then? It may have been something they’ve contemplated in the past as an emergency money boost, and they needed to pull the trigger when the Madoff thing hit.
since the art collection is likely not to fetch now as much as it was estimated to be worth then.
This is a valid argument, but something of a chimera. If it were an up time, there would be no need to sell the art, so you’d never sell the art then.
Put it another way – let’s say you have twenty chunks of gold and a hundred chunks of coal and you need to raise cash fast. The gold’s value fluctuates from $10,000-$50,000 a chunk and the coal is always worth $5/chunk. If you need cash fast when the gold is worth $15,000 a chunk, do you sell the coal instead because later the gold might be worth more? I don’t think so. Because no matter how much coal you sell, it’s still freaking coal and basically worthless. And your gold will be foreclosed on by the time you get around to selling it, waiting for its value to pop back up.
I also question the extent to which the arts market is falling at a rate commensurate with, say, stocks or housing. Sure, it’s not an optimal time for luxury items, but rarity of items and auctions are mechanics that tend to keep these kinds of items in much more stable price rhythms than things traded on a wider market.
And what happens the next time people defer too much to the Bernie Madoffs of the world, not asking questions, not following up, not looking for details about how this money is mysteriously being made, just happy to see the checks come in? What happens when the next set of big donors gets in trouble? Close down the music program and sell the instruments?
See Greg, here’s where you really undercut your whole argument. The whole point of this is that Brandeis is getting smart NOW and planning for a future that’s less certain and rosy (pun intended) than the past looked. By putting money away now and shoring up the future sustainability of the institution, Brandeis is finding a way to make its own way forward and not have to cut like this in times ahead.
And if they fail and have to face a situation like this in the future, I sure hope they again prioritize selling off a valuable collection of rare stuff over cutting the actual tangible educational experience of the students.
So here is my suggestion to Brandeis, one of which I think many alumni would approve: have the guts to publicly admit you made a mistake, and using everyone’s input, come up with a way to ensure you won’t make it again.
It’s not a mistake. Reneging now because people complained about an extremely intelligent (if somewhat painful) decision would be a gigantic mistake.
Then stop this absurd and short-sighted art fire sale and go to your science program–the one which pays its graduate students far more than any other graduate program on campus–and take some money from it. Close down a lab for a change, or cut a grant, or freeze the funding for that new chemistry wing you’ve been talking about.
Remember that “cutting the muscle” argument from before? Yeah, it’s here in spades. Science and research, though they personally hold even less interest for me than fine art, are what’s keeping Brandeis on the map. That butter stuff, the monkeys, all that stuff gets ‘Deis in the news even more than art museum closures. And that stuff pays for itself in time. Unlike the $5 admission fee at the Rose.
Props for suggesting a place to cut – not many are even going that far – but this ain’t the place for Brandeis’ long-term sustainability.
Perhaps then you’ll get some people asking the hard questions, and start finding solutions that don’t involve slashing programs which are fundamental to the cultural and artistic life of a university campus.
Again, people are asking all those questions now, as evidenced by the massive number of people sharing your view. But I’d like more details on why a random collection of art is “fundamental to the cultural and artistic life of a university campus”. How was it fundamental to your experience? How did it affect those around you? What did you think of the Rose on a day-to-day basis? Because I just fundamentally question that there’s any real value there. I didn’t see it in four years on campus and I don’t see it now.
But whatever you choose to do, please, just once, try looking somewhere other than the arts for things to cut. It’s about time someone else started paying the price for your ill judgment. I’m very fond of Brandeis and remember my time there with pleasure, but sorry…they’ve missed the boat badly on this one, and they deserve to take heat for it.
Sadly, they are taking crazy heat for a really brave and brilliant decision. I hope they stick to it and don’t get cowed by the media and alumni blitz. Again, I can’t stress enough, the actual arts programs are getting more space from this transaction, while a misplaced museum gets redistributed.
Honestly, really, everybody wins here. Einstein would be proud.
Hear, hear, as they say!
Jehuda’s e-mail, and his various interviews and statements, have reiterated the point that Brandeis is prioritizing its core mission: undergraduate education and research (a mission that’s been pretty public and well-defined for a good long while now).
As Storey pointed out, and Brandeis has been saying, cuts need to be made – not just in the next year, but in the next five. Contrary to popular belief, this really isn’t about Madoff and the Shapiros – while that obviously didn’t help, it’s telling that other young (read: under-endowed) universities have the same problem. The paradox is that just as the economy dries up and your endowment and gifts take a hit, you actually need to spend MORE money on undergrads because you need to give out more aid and slow tuition hikes.
So, yeah, it sucks that students won’t get the opportunity to amble to a semi-famous contemporary art museum on campus, and that Brandeis’ name won’t be featured on some plaque when pieces travel. But the gains from selling the art – not precipitously at a loss, but strategically over the next decade or so – will leave Brandeis much better equipped than many of its peers to pursue its core mission… and, incidentally, will likely be a net win for undergraduate arts education.
[…] must admit I hadn’t expected a reply of any kind from a fellow Mepper, though I considered the possibility that some Brandeis alumns might disagree (though, as Storey […]
[…] This immediately struck me as a brilliant and courageous move to cut dead weight at an institution reeling from faith in the stock market and the fallout of the Bernie Madoff fiasco. Over the course of the next week, I learned that I …Read More […]
[…] to take the debate back to Greg’s and my epic battle over the Rose Art Museum, but this example of modern art is where most such “art” […]