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January 31, 2009
Why close the museum? To sell the art!
More on Brandeis from Felix Salmon at Portfolio, who found out about the bizarro valuation at $1 for each piece of art!
Clearly, Brandeis has come to the conclusion that by shutting down the museum, it can ignore all rules pertaining to deaccessioning, and worry only about the strings attached by donors to individual artworks.Nathan also said something else which was extremely interesting to me: apparently all of the Rose Art Museum's artworks are considered to be assets of the university endowment, valued at $1 each. All the proceeds from the sale of any artwork, then, is automatically a desperately-needed capital gain for the endowment.
[my emphasis]
This is one of the most underhanded financial twists I've seen a university do in a long time! Because they value each asset at $1, every actual sale will be a capital gain! Yay! Whoever thought that one up deserves a bonus - a big bonus! Maybe even a John Thain-style office makeover.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at January 31, 2009 7:40 AM