Rose Art Museum. The Rose Art Museum, founded in 1961, is a part of Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, US. Named after benefactors Edward and Bertha Rose, it offers temporary exhibitions, and it displays and houses works of art from the Brandeis University art collections. The museum's collection includes more than 9,000 objects, including works by such artists as Mark Bradford, Judy Chicago, Helen Frankenthaler, Nan Goldin, William Kentridge, Mona Hatoum, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Willem de Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein, Marisol, Robert Motherwell, Robert Rauschenberg, Andrés Serrano, Jack Whitten, and Andy Warhol. In front of the museum stands Light of Reason by Chris Burden. The sculpture, commissioned by the university and installed in 2014, consists of three rows of 24 Victorian lamp posts which point away from the museum's entrance. The sculpture serves as a gateway and outdoor event space, and has become a campus landmark. Sam Hunter, the first director of the Rose Art Museum, came to Brandeis from the Museum of Modern Art, and with a grant of $50,000 from collectors Leon Mnuchin and his wife, Harriet Gevirtz-Mnuchin, launched a collection with iconic works by Johns, Rauschenberg, Warhol, Willem de Kooning and several others, 21 works with a ceiling of $5,000 for any one piece bought with the grant. The museum's exhibition and cultural programming have centered on leading contemporary artists, often giving these artists their first museum exhibitions: Frank Stella, Kiki Smith, Nam June Paik, and Dana Schutz among them. The Rose Art Museum has the leading collection of modern and contemporary art in New England. The Rose Art Museum is a small and simple geometric structure designed by the firm Harrison & Abramovitz. Its initial design contained 12,000 square feet square feet of exhibition space, a modest size. The building had no freight elevator, and the doors were too small for large works of art. The collection soon outgrew the building, and an expansion was completed in April 1974 at a cost of $500,000. This was also designed by Harrison & Abramovitz. With approximately 13,000 square feet of exhibition space in three galleries, the Rose Art Museum currently offers 9-12 exhibitions a year, most of which are organized by the Rose Art Museum curatorial team. The New York Times has taken notice of important exhibitions at the museum, praising an eminently worthwhile David von Schlegell retrospective in 1968; calling a 1969 exhibit of sculpture by James Rosatti an event of some importance; and devoting a full-length article to a 1981 Helen Frankenthaler exhibition. In 1991, Brandeis announced a plan to sell fourteen works of art from the Rose, including three by Renoir, two by Daumier, two by Vuillard, and one by Toulouse-Lautrec. The announcement drew sharp criticism. Arnold L. Lehman, President of the Association of Art Museum Directors called it like selling one of your children to feed the others, and the Association issued an official criticism of the plan. Mary Gardner Neill of the Yale University Art Gallery said We still oppose what they're doing, because it's wrong to convert collections into cash. If a museum sells art, the proceeds must go to replenish the collection with other works of art. Nevertheless, on November 6, 1991, eleven works were auctioned off at Christie's, bringing in $3.65 million which Brandeis said would be used for an endowment that will pay for acquisitions, education and conservation. On January 26, 2009, Brandeis president Jehuda Reinharz announced in an email to staff and students plans to close the museum by the end of the summer in response to the global financial crisis of 2008-2009. University spokesman Dennis Nealon called the surprise announcement a hard decision, but said, The bottom line is that the students, the faculty and core academic mission come first. Trustees had to look at the college's assets and came to a decision to maintain that fundamental commitment to teaching. The move was criticized by the museum's director and board, numerous art-world figures and some donors to the museum. The Massachusetts attorney general's office has approval powers over certain actions of nonprofit institutions located in the state, and Attorney General Martha Coakley said she planned to conduct a detailed review of the decision relative to wills and agreements made with donors. Nealon claimed that the attorney general had approved the legality of closing the Rose and selling its art, but the attorney general's office claimed they were only informed about the decision, not consulted beforehand.