Hol Art Books

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• Author & Project Manager:
  Francine Koslow Miller
  
• Editor: Saul Lelchuk
  
• Publicist: [apply]
• Designer: Andy Jacobson
• Bookstore Sponsor: [apply]

PROJECT STATUS: This project is currently active and underway, but seeking a publicist and bookstore sponsor. Using the links at left, apply to join the team and help make this book happen.

The Rape of the Rose will chronicle the pillaging of the collection of a crown jewel of contemporary art -- the Rose Art Museum on the campus of Brandeis University -- in response to the University’s current economic crisis. This project -- intended to serve as a memorial and warning to other university museums -- focuses on the six months of protest that preceded the eventual shutting of the Rose’s doors as a public institution on May 17, 2009, in preparation for the sell-off of the core of its 7,000 work collection.

The Rape of the Rose will document through factual accounts and commentary the ‘rise’ and ‘fall’ of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University. The book will open with the official e-mail that as an alumna, I received from Brandeis University President Jehuda Reinharz on January 26, 2009, announcing the “unanimous’ decision” by the University's Board of Trustees to close the museum and to sell off its holdings in response to the current economic crisis. The letter will be followed by a short history of the Rose Museum from its founding in 1961--with the help of a gift from Edward and Bertha Rose- -through its establishment of a major collection of contemporary art, and its vital role as a gathering spot for the art community and the general public. It will be followed by a report on the formation of a “Committee for the Future of the Rose Art Museum”, a hand-picked group aimed at deflecting attention from the already-made decision to sell parts of the collection and “repurpose” the building. A summary of various Rose-generated symposia on the future of institutional art museums will be followed by a description of the firing and solemn farewell of Director Michael Rush, the dispersal of the museum’s funds, and the shuttering of its doors on May 21, 2009.

Following my essays, which will be illustrated with examples of priceless works by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and others juxtaposed with images of student protest installations criticizing the sell-off of art on the building’s façade, will be a sampling of statements on the closing of the Rose by such luminaries as Robert Pinsky (poet laureate) Gary Tinterrow ( Brandeis alumnus and curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), Adam D. Weinberg ( Brandeis alumnus and Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art), by Rose Director Michael Rush, and members of the Rose Family and Board of Overseers of the Rose, the American Association of Art Museums, the International Association of Art Critics, The College Art Association and the Brandeis Community. Finally, The Rape of the Rose will include a checklist of some of the major works in the Rose Art Museum collection that will likely wind up on the' auction block in 2011, and a copy of a New York bill introduced to regulate museum deaccessions.