![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Dispossession by attrition is a permanent condition
FUCKING BERNIE MADOFF.
I suppose I should be glad an art museum is more readily sacrificed than a classics department? (I suspect it's easier to sell off paintings than professors.) Presidential reassurance notwithstanding, I find it hard to believe it's merely a sign of the times: "The global financial crisis and deepening national economic recession require Brandeis to formulate and execute decisive plans that will position the university to emerge stronger for the benefit of our students . . ." Oh, damn it, damn it. I should have gone to their surrealist exhibition in November. Art is meant to be cherished, not flung to the winds. Where do I protest? Maybe I can paint it on a wall.
I suppose I should be glad an art museum is more readily sacrificed than a classics department? (I suspect it's easier to sell off paintings than professors.) Presidential reassurance notwithstanding, I find it hard to believe it's merely a sign of the times: "The global financial crisis and deepening national economic recession require Brandeis to formulate and execute decisive plans that will position the university to emerge stronger for the benefit of our students . . ." Oh, damn it, damn it. I should have gone to their surrealist exhibition in November. Art is meant to be cherished, not flung to the winds. Where do I protest? Maybe I can paint it on a wall.
no subject
(no subject)
no subject
(no subject)
no subject
Much as it's better than axing classics, or some other department, as you said... I have to wonder if they looked at, oh, say, cutting administrators?
Perhaps that's just my cynicism coming through.
In any event, I'm sorry.
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
According to the press release sent to staff, the closing will take place this summer, so there will still be time to visit the collection (and, at risk of saying the obvious, there's nothing that one patron, or a thousand, could have done in light of the financial hole in which the university finds itself).
Which doesn't make me any less heartbroken. After so many years at Emory, having access to a good museum on campus was one of the few similarities at Brandeis. Seeing Warhols at lunch is something rare and special.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
I /think/ Williams is riding out the storm a little better (this is the one advantage to having so many finance people among the alumni)
I'm now wondering whether THEY'LL buy part of the collection.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
I feel like someone kicked me in the stomach.
(no subject)
no subject
I feel bad for the museum as a building, too, distinct from its art and its people; apparently it was just renovated in 2001; all that effort, time, money and thought only to close a few years later.
(no subject)
no subject
Of course this is a rotten dichotomy, but yes: in an urban area faculty can always take or send students out to see such jewels elsewhere. Then again, I'm hardly disinterested, I s'pose. This passage sounds familiar:
. . . such as reducing the size of the faculty by 10 percent, increasing undergraduate enrollment by 12 percent to boost tuition revenue, and overhauling the undergraduate curriculum by eliminating individual academic programs in favor of larger, interdisciplinary divisions.
At which point (and this is where my campus is headed too) I wonder who we think we're kidding. A recent message like that from my admin came followed by the solemn pronouncement that "we would never want to short-change the students." Humbuggery.
But we don't need to be gloomy. Convenient or not for the bean-counting mind, there's a need for higher ed. that can't be turned into a profit-making (or even money focussed) venture. (And thinking that I've just started work on my first online course, which *will* be about generating money . . .)
(no subject)
no subject
(no subject)
no subject
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
. . .
Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.
Why don't our distinguished orators come forward as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and they're bored by rhetoric and public speaking." ~ Constantine Cavafy, 1904
(no subject)
no subject
It does seem like a drastic move... was that surgery really necessary? I don't know. I know my sister, who went to Tufts, told me that some $20 million of its endowment was lost thanks to Madoff, too.
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
Maybe in the northeast, babe. Not where I went to school. (But then, popular legend had it my alma mater built its econ department--widely considered one of the best in the country--by finding people who'd been convicted of over x million in insider trading fraud.)
Art is meant to be cherished, not flung to the winds. Where do I protest? Maybe I can paint it on a wall.
I love the cognitive disjunction there, especially since it's actually a perfectly logical three sentences. But then, there are a whole bunch of mandala-makers who would likely disagree with you.
I'd have less of a problem with the idea if America still housed folks like the Arensbergs, who would simply let people come over to their house, wander around, and look at all the Braques and Duchamp hanging on their walls... in today's climate, though, I wonder how much of it will be seen again in my lifetime. sigh.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
I was looking at my friendsfriends page, and you commented in a post, and your icon 'Psholtii' made me really excited. No one ever knows what I'm talking about when I talk about The Cuckoo, and it's nice to see someone else appreciate it somehow. :)
So, yes. That's it, that's all I wanted to say.
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
Nine
(no subject)
no subject
(no subject)