President Jose Padilla of Valparaiso University recently announced to the university community that a petition has been filed in Porter County Superior Court requesting that the University be allowed to modify conditions of the 1953 Sloan Trust agreement with respect to three paintings that the University hopes to sell. Those paintings — Mountain Landscape (ca. 1849) by Frederic Church, The Silver Veil and the Golden Gate (ca. 1914) by Childe Hassam, and Rust Red Hills (ca. 1930) by Georgia O’Keeffe — are the three most valuable paintings in the Brauer Museum of Art’s permanent collection.
In their petition, the University argues that retaining those paintings has become “impracticable, impossible and wasteful.”
The University requests “modification of those conditions” of the trust agreement to permit Valparaiso University to sell those three paintings and use the sale proceeds to renovate its freshman dormitories and create therein the “Sloan Gallery of American Paintings” in order to directly display other works of the Sloan collection to students, all of which is intended to increase student enrollment and more consistently honor Sloan’s intent of furthering conservative art and art education so far as is possible and as is consistent with the general plans of Valparaiso University.
The petition provides reliable evidence the University faces financial challenges caused by decreases in enrollment. However, the reasons given to justify the sale of the paintings are not credible, and the trust requires that proceeds from the sale can only be used to preserve and improve the collection.
The University claims the three paintings are so valuable they cannot keep them safe without expending vast sums of money for capital improvement they do not have. Somehow five previous university presidents have managed to keep the collection secure. In 2007, shortly after the present facility opened, the Brauer Museum was one of five museums in the United States chosen to exhibit a selection of Old Masters from the national collection of Romania, including works by Rembrandt and El Greco. Security for that exhibit was enhanced, and why not? Where there is a will, there is a way.
President Padilla won’t say what threats to the security of those paintings motivated him in September to hire art handlers to remove the works just prior to Homecoming and lock them up off campus in an undisclosed site. He claimed he did so “out of an abundance of caution.” He won’t say if there were credible threats. I wonder what makes the works safer off campus, likely in Chicago, rather than in our own vault, and who knows at what cost for transport and storage.
Even less credible are University claims supported by two appraisers they hired to support their argument that the paintings by Hassam and O’Keeffe are outliers in the collection that were purchased inappropriately and are therefore eligible for deaccession and sale. It is as if the conditions of the trust don’t apply because the committee, allegedly led astray by Richard Brauer, purchased them improperly, which is utter foolishness.
The Hassam and the O’Keeffe are cornerstones of the collection, as is the Church.
There is not time or space to show how that argument falls apart if one has even a rudimentary knowledge of what pieces Percy Sloan actually collected and donated to the University, or how the collection committee, supervised by the trustee Louis Miller, actually worked. One hour in the University Archives reading collection committee minutes would take care of that.
The fact is, the University has chosen those three works to sell because of their appraised value, pure and simple.
The University’s needs are financial. The rest is a smokescreen, because there is nothing anywhere in Percy Sloan’s will or in the trust agreement his trustee, Louis Miller, signed with Paul Brandt, then Chairman of the Board of Directors of Valparaiso University, that would authorize the use of funds from the sale of artwork in the Sloan Collection for capital improvements.
I had hoped the Attorney General would recommend against the petition as a clear violation of donor intent, but I was wrong. I sincerely hope a Porter County probate judge rules differently.
For myself, I am appalled that the University in its petition discredits the achievement of Richard Brauer and impugns his integrity, whose life’s work resulted in the creation of Northwest Indiana’s most outstanding collection of American art. Brauer is a saintly figure in our community, whose genius is obvious in the artwork he promoted to the committee that purchased them, with the trustees having veto power and being involved in every acquisition. He continues to serve Northwest Indiana as a great public servant and advocate for the arts.
For the University to suggest he violated a trust whose aspiration he and others helped bring to marvelous fruition, is shameful.
Brauer deserves better. Northwest Indiana deserves better.
John Ruff is a Senior Research Professor of English at Valparaiso University.
