Valparaiso University removes museum paintings subject of lawsuit, possible sale for ‘protection’
The three paintings that Valparaiso University is considering for auction to raise funds for the renovation of dorms for first-year students were removed from the walls of the Brauer Museum of Art Tuesday afternoon and placed off campus for safekeeping until a lawsuit revolving around the possible sale is resolved.
“In light of this heightened activity, and in accordance with the University’s responsibility to safeguard these works, they have been relocated to a secure off-site location out of an abundance of caution. The off-site location is not that of an art broker,” José Padilla, the university’s president, said in a statement to campus late Tuesday.
The decision is raising the ire of at least two people involved in the fight to keep the paintings on campus from the beginning — Dick Brauer, the museum’s founder and namesake, who has threatened to remove his name from the facility if the university sells the paintings, and John Ruff, a senior research professor in English who has established ties to the museum.
The safest place for the paintings, Brauer said in an email, is in the secure, climate-controlled underground vaults at the museum designed for just that purpose, “in a safe, police patrolled campus handled by experienced art handlers incurring no extra cost.”
“I wonder how much extra danger, insurance and other costs the removal of these multimillion dollar artworks has the university incurred.”
He also wondered why university officials are so quick to expect the worst. “Who is worthy of trust, legally and ethically? Whose wish is above all to carry out the provisions of the Sloan Trust agreement?”
The trust provided funds to purchase two of the three paintings.
Ruff, too, said he finds it “regrettable” that Padilla has decided the paintings aren’t secure within the confines of the museum.
“They’ve been secure for how many decades now in the care of professionals and they were, in my mind, never insecure until (Padilla) and his staff found out their worth,” Ruff said.
He questioned whether there is a security threat or if the Valparaiso University Police Department found out about a threat to the artwork.
“I find this very regrettable,” Ruff said.
A university spokesman confirmed the paintings were removed Tuesday afternoon. He declined further comment, noting the removal of the paintings was a security matter. Jonathan Canning, the museum’s curator and director, declined to comment and referred all questions to the spokesman.
“No final decision about their possible sale has been made and the works will remain relocated for their protection for the foreseeable future, including as the legal and due diligence process continues,” Padilla said in his statement.
Padilla first announced the possible sale of three renowned works of art to fund the dorm renovations in early February. The paintings are considered cornerstones of the museum’s collection and have an estimated worth of millions of dollars. They are “Rust Red Hills” by Georgia O’Keeffe; Childe Hassam’s “The Silver Veil and the Golden Gate”; and Frederic Edwin Church’s “Mountain Landscape.”
The O’Keeffe and Hassam paintings were purchased through the Percy Sloan Fund; Church’s work was a direct gift from Sloan.
“The proceeds of the sale will be applied directly to long-overdue renovations of two student residential facilities, creating a greatly improved and competitive college experience for some 600 students who call those residences home,” Padilla said in his statement Tuesday, also noting that the paintings are “from Valpo’s 5,000+ piece collection.”
The projected cost of renovating Brandt Hall and Wehrenberg Hall is approximately $8 million, a university spokesman has said.
The announcement about the possible sale of the artwork, first reported in the Post-Tribune, set off a firestorm of criticism from students, alumni, faculty and the art world and included a wide range of concerns, from possible sanctions against the museum by the nation’s art museum associations to the loss of donations for fear that the university would not respect donors’ wishes, as well as the violation of the trust that provided for the artwork to begin with.
In tandem with Padilla’s announcement about the paintings Tuesday, he and the other defendants in a lawsuit from Brauer and Philipp Brockington, a retired VU law professor and museum benefactor, to stop the sale of the paintings, filed a notice in Porter Superior Court that the university has relocated the paintings.
“Valparaiso University has relocated from display, and intends to store securely, with an appropriate shipper that regularly deals with the transfer and storage of similar assets, the assets at issue in this matter in order to ensure their security,” according to the notice. “This shipper is not a seller of similar assets but only in the business of transferring and storing similar assets.”
The court document also states that the assets “remain under the control of Valparaiso University.”
The lawsuit argues that Brauer and Brockington both have standing to challenge the sale of the artwork because of Brauer’s longtime association with the museum and personal stake in it, and because of an endowment for the museum established by Brockington to “acquire, restore, and preserve” works of art and artifacts for the museum.
The proposal to sell the artwork for renovating dorms, the documents note, is “as if the Percy H. Sloan donation is a mere ATM to be used irrespective of donor intent.”
“We are confident that Percy Sloan never envisioned using artwork proceeds to renovate dormitories and the only question the court will have to answer is whether Mr. Brockington and Mr. Brauer have sufficient standing to stop that from happening,” Portage attorney Patrick McEuen said in an April phone interview about the lawsuit.
In court filings, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has backed up Valparaiso University’s contention that the lawsuit should be dismissed because the plaintiffs who filed the suit don’t have standing to do so.
He has reiterated the university’s claim that Brauer and Brockington cannot file the suit because they are not directly connected to the charitable trust, the Percy Sloan Fund, that provided the museum the artwork with the stipulation that proceeds from any sale of the works be reinvested in the museum and its collection.
A hearing on the lawsuit is scheduled for 1 p.m. Sept. 27 before Porter Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Thode, in the Portage North County Annex.
