I hope we don’t see a lot more of this.
A US university is being forced by the sagging economy to close its celebrated museum of modern art and sell off its 8,000-piece collection, which includes works by Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol, it said in a statement Tuesday.“Brandeis University’s board of trustees has voted unanimously to close the Rose Art Museum as part of a campus-wide effort to preserve the university’s educational mission in the face of the historic economic recession and financial crisis,” the statement said.
The museum will close in “late summer 2009″ and the art collection will be sold through a top auction house, the statement said.
It’s one thing to “tighten the belt.” Quite another to imagine institutions of higher education holding fire sales on classroom equipment and library collections in order to keep the heat and lights on.
