Members of the advisory board of the DePaul Art Museum in Chicago have written a scathing letter to the leadership of DePaul University, where the museum is located, demanding reconsideration of the decision announced last month to close the 40-year-old institution on June 30.
The letter was addressed to Chancellor Robert L. Manuel, Provost Salma Ghanem and other leaders and the university’s Board of Trustees, which is located in the Windy City’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. It was signed by advisory board chairman Scott J. Hunter, a retired professor who teaches at the University of Chicago, and other board members including artists Brendan Fernandes, Rachel LS Harper and Melissa Leandro; former Expo Chicago president Tony Kaman; Sotheby’s senior vice president Gary Metzner Metzner); and artistic advisor Lynn Manilow. Many members of the advisory board have served for more than a decade, some of whom were involved before the museum opened its building in 2011.
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“We, as members of the DePaul University Art Museum (DPAM) Advisory Board, wish to share directly with you our deep anger, frustration, and deep sadness over your recent and shocking decision to permanently close the art museum and, even more problematically, what to do with the related art collection that the university has built over the years,” their letter reads.
DPAM has a collection of approximately 4,000 works, which it has been collecting since 1972. It mainly collects international modern and contemporary art works. Its collection features artists from the Windy City Monster Roster and the Chicago Imagists, including Roger Brown and Christina Ramberg, as well as many other Chicago artists, from Candida Alvarez to Daoud Bey to Chris Ware.
The board went on to complain about the “seemingly never-ending whirlwind of uncertainty and poor decision-making by university administration,” and accused administration of “ruining and discarding” a “jewel” on campus despite their “enormous efforts” to keep the museum open.
The advisory board’s letter is just the latest expression of outrage over the school’s decision to close DPAM. Two days after the school’s announcement, more than 3,750 faculty, staff and students issued an open letter expressing their opposition. “Orwellian invitations aside to ‘reimagine’ art by closing the museum, it seems to us that those making the decision must not have fully appreciated the multifaceted and widespread value of the DePaul Art Museum (DPAM) to our academic community,” the letter reads. “We submit this open letter for your consideration in an attempt to make that value apparent.”
There was no immediate response from the DePaul University press office. art newsRequest for comment.
The school’s website proudly notes its “Vincentian Values,” a reference to the school’s founding in 1898 by the Congregation of the Mission, a Catholic order also known as the Vincentians named after the 17th-century French priest Saint Vincent de Paul. The advisory committee’s letter accuses the school of abandoning those values.
The letter also calls the process “exasperating,” as the advisory board has been working closely with DPAM Director Laura-Caroline de Lara and the university’s development team to secure outside donations to secure the museum’s future. The school also failed to clearly consider its legal responsibilities for the collection or the wishes of donors who donated art to the institution, the letter said.
DePaul University currently faces significant financial challenges. Faced with a sharp decline in international student enrollment, DePaul University laid off 114 of its 1,493 employees, or just over 7%, in December, according to the data. world news networkThe school has reportedly sought to cut spending by about $27.4 million. DePaul is not the only school facing budget constraints, the advisory committee noted in its letter, adding that what other institutions “are not doing is eliminating their most important cultural and educational assets.”
The advisory board also noted that while the university was abandoning the museum, plans were moving forward to build a state-of-the-art athletic facility, for which University President Manuel reported last February that the university had received more than $10 million in donations. The advisory committee’s letter called the facility a “reward for a few” rather than a museum that serves everyone.
