The Rose Art Museum in Waltham, Massachusetts, twelve years after its collection seemed fated to be sold off by Brandeis University to raise funds, says it has received gifts of 86 works of art including pieces by Francesco Clemente, Jim Dine, Jenny Holzer, Betye Saar and Andy Warhol in honor of the 60th anniversary of its founding.
The donation appeared to be the new light of hope for the museum to sustain its more than 9000 works of art after the attempted 2009 shutdown, and to survive the current financial downturn precipitated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Rose’s director and chief curator, Gannit Ankori, says she has taken a voluntary pay cut and drastically cut operating expenses in response to the pandemic, but that she sees the gifts as a testament to the museum’s stature and endurance. The donations “greatly enhance our permanent collection and reaffirm the significance of the Rose as a leading repository of Modern and contemporary art,” she says in a statement.
Some of the gifts announced by the Rose bolster its holdings of works by the same artists, while others mark the entry of new and underrepresented figures. Many were donated by the Rose’s board of advisors, “whose support through thick and thin has been extraordinary”, the director adds. While she says she is “not allowed to have favourites,” Ankori calls particular attention to the museum’s acquisition of its second Betye Saar assemblage, Standing in the Shadow of Love (2020); civil rights-era photographs by Danny Lyon; and works by artists who were not previously represented in the collection, including Yoko Ono, Qingsong Wang, Danh Vo and Koichiro Wakamatsu.
Jonathan Novak, a Brandeis University alumnus and California art dealer, donated a diptych painting by Dine, Harry Mathews Skis the Vercour (1973). Sixteen other alumni donated two works by James (Ari) Montford Jr, the first Black Native American graduate of the studio art programme at Brandeis, while two other pieces by the artist were gifted by a gallery and a private donor.
Gerald S. Fineberg, a member of the Rose’s board of trustees, and his wife, Sandra, gave the museum 14 paintings, sculptures, photographs and works on paper. Among them are a 1989 red granite bench by Holzer, part of her Survival series, the third piece by the artist to enter the museum’s collection; the Saar assemblage; a large Warhol drawing; and works on paper by Tracey Moffatt and Nam June Paik. The Rose says that new artists to enter the collection through the Fineberg gift include Clemente, Allen Ginsberg, Ono, Qingsong and others.
Beth Marcus, a longtime donor, gave the museum a copper sculpture from Vo’s We the People (2011), one of 250 pieces cast from fragments of the Vietnamese-born artist’s replica of the Statue of Liberty.
The 86 newly donated works of art “is but one of many examples that display the incredible support and confidence the Rose has regained,” says Ankori, who became director and chief curator in January after filling both roles on an interim basis last year. “Both the Rose and Brandeis have worked tirelessly to repair trust with donors and the wider world.”
The museum is currently closed to the general public because of Covid-19 concerns but has been allowing limited visits by Brandeis students, faculty and staff members since last fall.
