[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/De-Paul-Art-Museum.jpeg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tThe members of the advisory board of Chicago\u2019s DePaul Art Museum have penned a scathing letter to the leadership of DePaul University, which houses the museum, to reconsider its decision to shutter the 40-year-old institution on June 30, which was announced last month.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe letter is addressed to school president Robert L. Manuel, provost Salma Ghanem, and other leaders as well as the board of trustees of the university, which is sited in the Windy City\u2019s Lincoln Park neighborhood. It is signed by advisory board chair Scott J. Hunter, a retired professor who taught at the University of Chicago, along with other board members including artists Brendan Fernandes, Rachel L.S. Harper, and Melissa Leandro; former Expo Chicago head Tony Karman; Sotheby\u2019s senior vice president Gary Metzner; and art adviser Lynn Manilow. Many members of the advisory board have served for more than a decade, and some date their participation to before the museum took up residence in a building opened in 2011.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe the members of the Advisory Board for the DePaul University Art Museum (DPAM) want to share directly with you our significant anger, frustration, and deep sadness regarding your recent egregious decision to permanently close the art museum, and even more problematically, determine post-hoc what is to be done with the associated art collection that has been established over many years for the University,\u201d their letter reads.<\/p>\n
\n\tDPAM boasts a collection of some 4,000 objects, with a focus on international modern and contemporary art, which it began amassing in 1972. Its holdings are strong in artists from the Windy City\u2019s Monster Roster and the Chicago Imagists, including Roger Brown and Christina Ramberg, as well as many other Chicago artists, from Candida Alvarez to Dawoud Bey to Chris Ware.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe board goes on to complain of a \u201cseemingly never-ending whirlwind of both uncertainty and poor decision-making by the University administration\u201d and accuses the administration of leaving a \u201cjewel\u201d of the campus \u201cbattered and discarded\u201d despite their \u201cmassive effort\u201d to keep the museum open.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe advisory board\u2019s letter is just the latest expression of outrage over the school\u2019s decision to close DPAM. Over 3,750 faculty, staff, and students published an open letter in opposition two days after the school\u2019s announcement. \u201cLeaving aside the Orwellian invitation to \u2018re-imagine\u2019 the arts by closing the building that houses them, it seems to us that those making the decision must not be fully aware of the multifaceted and widespread value that the DePaul Art Museum (DPAM) has for our academic community,\u201d that letter reads. \u201cWe submit this open letter for your consideration in an attempt to make that value evident.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tAfter the publication of this article, DePaul University\u2019s press office sent ARTnews<\/em> a statement calling it a \u201cdifficult decision\u201d to stop operations at the museum. \u201cWe will convene a discussion with our university community to explore how the museum building and its collections can continue to serve as assets to DePaul, elevating our academic prominence and supporting the recruitment, training and development of current and future students,\u201d said a spokesperson, adding, \u201cWe have no plans to sell the permanent art collection. We are working to ensure the collection can be used for academic purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe school\u2019s website proudly notes its \u201cVincentian values,\u201d referring to the school\u2019s 1898 founding by the Congregation of the Mission, a Catholic order also known as the Vincentians, named for 17th-century French priest Saint Vincent de Paul. The advisory board\u2019s letter accuses the school of discarding those values.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe letter also characterized the process as \u201cgalling\u201d given that the advisory board has been working closely with DPAM director Laura-Caroline de Lara and the university\u2019s development team to secure external gifts that would insure the museum\u2019s future. The school also has not taken clear account of its legal responsibilities to the collection or the wishes of the donors who gave their artworks to the institution, the letter claims.<\/p>\n \n\tDePaul University is currently braving considerable fiscal challenges. In the face of a significant drop in international enrollment, DePaul laid off 114 out of 1,493 staffers, or just over 7 percent, in December,\u00a0 according to WTTW News<\/em>, which reported that the school had sought to cut some $27.4 million in spending. DePaul is hardly alone in facing a budget crunch, the advisory board\u2019s letter note, adding that what other institutions \u201care not doing is removing their most important cultural and educational assets.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe advisory board also notes that at the same moment the university is walking away from the museum, plans are moving ahead for a state-of-the-art athletic facility, for which the university received more than $10 million in donations, university president Manuel reported last February. The advisory board\u2019s letter calls the facility \u201crewards to the few,\u201d as opposed to a museum meant for all.<\/p>\n Update, 3\/17\/26, 2:45 p.m<\/strong>.:\u00a0This article was updated to include comment from DePaul University.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/depaul-art-museum-advisory-board-letter-save-institution-1234777628\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/De-Paul-Art-Museum.jpeg?w=1024″] The members of the advisory board of Chicago\u2019s DePaul Art Museum have penned a scathing letter to the leadership of DePaul University, which houses the museum, to reconsider its decision to shutter the 40-year-old institution on June 30, which was announced last month. The letter is addressed to school president Robert L. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1830885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1830885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1830885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1830885\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1830885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1830885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1830885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}