One Year On, Fresh Resolve
February | 2024
It has been a year since the news broke that Valparaiso University Administration intends to sell three masterpieces from the Sloan Collection of the Brauer Museum of Art to fund dormitory renovations.
Last December, former museum director Richard Brauer and museum donor Philipp Brockington were denied legal standing to challenge the sale in court. Both sides now await a decision by Todd Rokita, Indiana Attorney General, as to the legality of such a sale.
Respectfully, Mr. Rokita, there’s only one way to settle this. As we have always argued, the Administration must honor its legally-binding commitment to preserve, maintain, and make accessible to students and the local community the gift of art it accepted from Percy Sloan’s estate in 1953. This is also the opinion of art law expert Nicholas O’Donnell, author of a recent online article about the Brauer controversy. READ HERE
In the article, O’Donnell explains the Attorney General’s role as the only person with “standing to intervene.” He also reviews the original gift agreement documents and identifies specific conditions that then University Board President Paul Brandt accepted on the University’s behalf. O’Donnell concludes that those conditions are still binding and that they preclude a sale to fund building renovations.
The University lacks the legal authority to sell this art.
Read the original gift documents for yourselves. The Brauer/Brockington case put them into the public domain and we make them available for you here:
The Brauer/Brockington litigation also uncovered the initial communication between Valparaiso University Administration and the Attorney General’s office. With the permission of the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Patrick McEwen, who received the letter through a Freedom of Information Act request, we make that document available HERE
Notice that the Administration does not address its obligations at all. Rather, it presents an executive summary of its business plan without providing any evidence that renovated dormitories will attract sufficient students to secure the University’s finances. Insultingly, the Administration makes a travesty of Percy Sloan’s career as an art educator and his deeply held conviction that art is an essential component in a young person’s education. Without any sense of shame, the Administration claims that Sloan would support the sale of some of his paintings to increase the number of students who might enjoy the rump of his art collection. Once you have read Sloan’s will, you will see that argument for the arrant nonsense that it is.
Fortunately, it is not Todd Rokita’s role to judge the viability of the University’s business plan. It is his duty to uphold the law and, in this case, to require the University to adhere to the terms of the gift. It is Rokita’s responsibility to protect all other generous endowments and benefactions bestowed on nonprofits throughout Indiana.
Let’s keep the pressure on the Attorney General.
Sign this petition. (If you have signed it already, please do not sign it again.)
Solicit new signatories from among your family, friends, and fellow art lovers.
The Attorney General receives a regular update of all new signatures. We have reached over 2,700 signatures! But that doesn’t mean you can’t also contact Scott Barnhart at the Office of Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita directly!
See our “What Can You Do” section below.
Confident that “beauty abounds everywhere,” Percy Sloan established a stunning collection of American art at Valpo. Richard Brauer cultivated it. Philipp Brockington enriched it. The AG is now charged to preserve it.
The Paintings Were Removed From Brauer Museum
President Padilla issued a statement on Sept. 16th telling the campus community, “the works will remain relocated for their protection for the foreseeable future, including as the legal and due diligence process continues.” A hearing on the lawsuit was held on Sept. 27 before Porter Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Thode. The art sale lawsuit was dismissed, as the judge ruled lack of standing. The decision about whether Padilla and the Lutheran University Association can make the sale still lies in the hands of Attorney General Todd Rokita.
The Valparaiso University Center for the Arts, which houses the Brauer Museum of Art. Photo by Runner1928, via Wikimedia Commons
What Can You Do?
Sign the Petition
Contact Scott Barnhart at the Office of Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita
Contact President Padilla’s Office, members of the President’s Council, and Valparaiso University Board Members
Print out the flyers below and hand them out!
Show your support on campus by wearing red dots, handing out flyers, and telling alumni how they can help by completing steps 1-4
REPEAT
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita
has the power
to stop the sale!
In addition to signing the petition on this website, write directly to Rokita’s office. Contact Scott L. Barnhart, Chief Counsel, Director of Consumer Protection, Office of Attorney General Todd Rokita:
scott.barnhart@atg.in.gov
Eliot Aust, The Torch
How We Got Here
In an email to the Valparaiso University campus community on Feb. 8, 2023, President José Padilla announced an update in the University’s pursuit of its five-year Strategic Plan…
“We will consider assets and resources that are not core or critical to our educational mission and strategic plan, and reallocate them to support the plan. In this instance, we intend to pay for the much-needed dorm renovations by using the proceeds from the sale of select paintings from the campus art museum.”
-José D. Padilla
President of Valparaiso University
What Has Happened Since…
What’s At Stake
Rust Red Hills, 1930
Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986)
Oil on canvas, 16 x 30 inches
Brauer Museum of Art
Sloan Fund Purchase
The Silver Veil and
the Golden Gate, 1914
Childe Hassam (1859-1935)
Oil on canvas, 30 x 32 inches
Brauer Museum of Art
Sloan Fund Purchase
Mountain Landscape, 1849
Frederic Church (1826-1900)
Oil on canvas, 14½ x 19¾ inches
Brauer Museum of Art
Gift of Percy H. Sloan
Museum Ethics
Is this a grievous breach of trust with the University’s donors, the academic community, and the residents of Northwest Indiana?
In 1953, Paul Brandt, President of the Valparaiso University Association signed an irrevocable agreement in which he not only pledged to maintain and develop Percy Sloan’s collection of American paintings according to certain conditions, but also acknowledged Sloan’s personal philosophy and motivation to make of a gift of his collection.
“I am unwilling,” Sloan wrote in his Trust Agreement, “to give the Collection and its Endowment to any institution that accepts only the paintings and money but refuses further collaboration with me or my trustee in materializing my plans.”
A dutiful son, Percy Sloan sought to preserve his father’s artistic legacy. Junius Sloan (1827-1900) was both a portraitist and a Hudson River School landscape artist. As an art educator, his son believed in the power of paintings to open students’ eyes to the omnipresence of beauty in the world. He was confident that the study of aesthetics and an appreciation for art would “prove a limitless source of happiness.”
In addition to a few hundred pieces by his father, Percy Sloan donated works by other leading American painters. Among their number was Frederic Church’s Mountain Landscape (ca. 1849). Sloan also directed that the remainder of his estate be sold to create an endowment fund for the purchase of additional paintings of merit by American artists, of American scenes. In fulfillment of these criteria, both Childe Hassam’s The Silver Veil and the Golden Gate (1914) and Georgia O’Keeffe’s Rust Red Hills (1930) were subsequently acquired. The proceeds of the sale of any painting donated by Sloan – he only authorized the sale of “lesser works by [his] father” – were to be deposited into the endowment fund.
Sloan’s gift was intended to benefit not only university students but also local residents. “I wish the Collection operated…[in] the fullest possible service to the students and community.” These three paintings have been held in the public trust for generations of Northwest Indiana residents. Admission to the collection has always been free. The University is breaking trust with its neighbors.
For these reasons, the American Alliance of Museums, the Association of Art Museum Curators, the Association of Art Museum Directors, and the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries have collectively denounced the proposed sale as unethical.
The Petition
Portrait of Inaugural Director of Brauer Museum of Art, Richard H.W. Brauer, in Storage at the Brauer Museum with the Childe Hassam and Georgia O’Keeffe, 2015,
Caleb Kortokrax (American, b. 1987)
Oil on canvas, mounted on wood (43¾ x 35 in.), Brockington/ Reeve Endowment Purchase, Brauer Museum of Art, Valparaiso University, 2015.03 ©️ Caleb Kortokrax
To Valparaiso University President José Padilla and the Board of Directors of the Lutheran University Association, Inc.,
We, the undersigned – artists, collectors, donors, art historians, museum professionals, teachers, university faculty, and lovers of art – write in protest at your intention to sell paintings from the collection of the Brauer Museum of Art to fund the renovation of dormitories.
Georgia O’Keeffe’s Rust Red Hills (1930), Childe Hassam’s The Silver Veil and the Golden Gate (1914), and Frederic Church’s Mountain Landscape (1858) are extraordinary works that have been held in the public trust for sixty years. The three artists hold pride of place in the history of American art. Ownership of these works should be a source of pride, not capital, for the university. To monetize them is unethical and a grievous breach of faith with the university’s many donors, especially Percy Sloan, who donated the Church landscape and endowed the fund by which the Hassam and O’Keeffe paintings were acquired.
The Brauer is part of a venerable tradition of American university museums, many located in small communities like Valparaiso. They are vital resources.They foster intellectual curiosity in and between diverse disciplines; they encourage cross-cultural dialogue and promote inclusivity. The Brauer lies at the heart of the university, and we challenge any interpretation of the university’s strategic plan and core mission that envisions otherwise.
We call upon you to work with the Taskforce for the Protection of University Collections and others to find a creative alternative to the sale of these cultural treasures. We ask you to leave them in the professional care of the Brauer and your faculty for the education, enrichment, and enjoyment of future generations.
Yours sincerely,
Sign the Petition
Over 2,500 signatures and counting…
We, the undersigned – artists, collectors, donors, art historians, museum professionals, teachers, university faculty, and lovers of art – write in protest at your intention to sell paintings from the collection of the Brauer Museum of Art to fund the renovation of dormitories.
By pressing submit you are signing the petition and sending a copy of your signed petition to President Padilla (president@valpo.edu) and the University Board of Directors.