Paintings from Brauer Museum could be headed to auction after Friday court filing

A visitor walks among paintings, including Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Rust Red Hills” at the Brauer Museum of Art on the Valparaiso University campus in Valparaiso, Indiana on Friday, February 10, 2023.

“The Attorney General does not object to the University’s requested relief as outlined in its Petition.” The Attorney General’s Office got the weight of the decision on the paintings’ fate after Brauer and the late Philipp Brockington, a retired VU law professor and museum benefactor, filed a lawsuit to halt the sale of the artwork last spring.

The university has demanded the petition to intervene be withdrawn, said Portage attorney Patrick McEuen, who has worked with Brauer, Brockington and now Ruff to stop the sale “I don’t think this proposed sale is consistent with this trust, period,” said Boston attorney Nicholas O’Donnell, an expert on art law and author on the subject.

When Brandeis University lost a huge portion of its endowment because the scheming of financier Bernie Madoff brought down several of its large benefactors, the university argued that it had to sell the artwork in its expansive collection to survive, O’Donnell said, though Brandeis officials later backed down.

In simpler terms, Valparaiso University argues that keeping the paintings is too expensive and impractical to follow the terms of the trust and is therefore asking the court to sell the paintings and use the proceeds for the dorm renovations and a gallery of other paintings from the Sloan collection.

That and the operating deficit make it “impractical and wasteful for Valparaiso University to spend funds on the capital improvements needed to securely display the O’Keeffe, Hassam, and Church paintings. It is likewise wasteful for those three paintings to remain in storage.” The university’s argument for selling the paintings also hinges on its claim that two of the paintings, those by O’Keeffe and Hassam, do not fit in with the “conservative” art movement that was at the forefront of Sloan’s collection, and therefore should be deaccessioned.Senior research professor John Ruff pauses while speaking about the Brauer Museum of Art at Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Indiana on Monday, February 6, 2023.

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