The members of the advisory board of Chicago’s DePaul Art Museum have penned a scathing letter to the leadership of DePaul University, which houses the museum, to reconsider its decision to shutter the 40-year-old institution on June 30, which was announced last month.
The letter is addressed to school president Robert L. Manuel, provost Salma Ghanem, and other leaders as well as the board of trustees of the university, which is sited in the Windy City’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. It is signed by advisory board chair Scott J. Hunter, a retired professor who taught at the University of Chicago, along with other board members including artists Brendan Fernandes, Rachel L.S. Harper, and Melissa Leandro; former Expo Chicago head Tony Karman; Sotheby’s senior vice president Gary Metzner; and art adviser Lynn Manilow. Many members of the advisory board have served for more than a decade, and some date their participation to before the museum took up residence in a building opened in 2011.
“We the members of the Advisory Board for the DePaul University Art Museum (DPAM) want to share directly with you our significant anger, frustration, and deep sadness regarding your recent egregious decision to permanently close the art museum, and even more problematically, determine post-hoc what is to be done with the associated art collection that has been established over many years for the University,” their letter reads.
DPAM boasts a collection of some 4,000 objects, with a focus on international modern and contemporary art, which it began amassing in 1972. Its holdings are strong in artists from the Windy City’s Monster Roster and the Chicago Imagists, including Roger Brown and Christina Ramberg, as well as many other Chicago artists, from Candida Alvarez to Dawoud Bey to Chris Ware.
The board goes on to complain of a “seemingly never-ending whirlwind of both uncertainty and poor decision-making by the University administration” and accuses the administration of leaving a “jewel” of the campus “battered and discarded” despite their “massive effort” 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. Over 3,750 faculty, staff, and students published an open letter in opposition two days after the school’s announcement. “Leaving aside the Orwellian invitation to ‘re-imagine’ the arts by closing the building that houses them, it seems to us that those making the decision must not be fully aware of the multifaceted and widespread value that the DePaul Art Museum (DPAM) has for our academic community,” that letter reads. “We submit this open letter for your consideration in an attempt to make that value evident.”
DePaul University’s press office did not immediately respond to ARTnews’s request for comment.
The school’s website proudly notes its “Vincentian values,” referring to the school’s 1898 founding by the Congregation of the Mission, a Catholic order also known as the Vincentians, named for 17th-century French priest Saint Vincent de Paul. The advisory board’s letter accuses the school of discarding those values.
The letter also characterized the process as “galling” given that the advisory board has been working closely with DPAM director Laura-Caroline de Lara and the university’s development team to secure external gifts that would insure the museum’s future. The school also has not taken clear account of its legal responsibilities to the collection or the wishes of the donors who gave their artworks to the institution, the letter claims.
DePaul University is currently braving considerable fiscal challenges. In the face of a significant drop in international enrollment, DePaul laid off 114 out of 1,493 staffers, or just over 7 percent, in December, according to WTTW News, which reported that the school had sought to cut some $27.4 million in spending. DePaul is hardly alone in facing a budget crunch, the advisory board’s letter note, adding that what other institutions “are not doing is removing their most important cultural and educational assets.”
The advisory board also notes that at the same moment the university is walking away from the museum, plans are moving ahead for a state-of-the-art athletic facility, for which the university received more than $10 million in donations, university president Manuel reported last February. The advisory board’s letter calls the facility “rewards to the few,” as opposed to a museum meant for all.
