DePaul University to close DePaul Art Museum despite campus backlash
DePaul University’s decision to shut down the DePaul Art Museum in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood has triggered a swift and unusually broad response from students, faculty, and museum supporters. Within days of the university’s February 26 announcement, an open letter opposing the closure had collected more than 3,000 signatures. Even so, the museum is scheduled to close on June 30.
Founded in 1985, the DePaul Art Museum, known as DPAM, began in a space carved out of the university library before moving in 2011 into a new $7.8 million, 15,350-square-foot, three-story LEED-certified building. The move marked a significant investment in visual art and gave the campus a cultural center with reach beyond the university itself.
The closure comes as DePaul projects a substantial budget deficit in 2026 and has sought to reduce spending by $27.4 million. The university laid off 114 staff members last December. Laura-Caroline de Lara, DPAM’s director, said she raised enough money to keep the museum’s small staff in place and the doors open through June, allowing the institution to complete exhibitions already planned and contractually required.
De Lara had hoped the museum could demonstrate its ability to survive with outside support. So far, the administration has not changed course. “It is hard to fundraise if your parent organisation doesn’t have skin in the game,” she said.
Former director Julie Rodrigues Widholm, now head of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive at the University of California, Berkeley, said she understands the pressures facing higher education, including low enrollment, but questioned the logic of the decision. “What I find confusing is how closing the museum solves the problem,” she said.
Widholm also emphasized the museum’s role in training students. DePaul’s museum studies students gain professional experience through internships and other work at DPAM, while the museum has also served as a venue for ambitious exhibitions that connect scholarship, curatorial practice, and public access.
The university’s closure statement, issued by president Robert L. Manuel, was titled “Reimagining the arts at DePaul University.” The open letter from students and faculty answered sharply, arguing that the museum’s pedagogical and professional value is central to the university’s Vincentian Catholic mission and to student flourishing.
The museum’s future also raises questions about its collection, which includes about 4,000 works. Among them are paintings by Chicago artists such as Gertrude Abercrombie, Christina Ramberg, Julia Thecla, Leon Golub, and Roger Brown, along with works by Martin Puryear, Edra Soto, Andy Warhol, Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, Bruce Davidson, Barbara Crane, and Tony Fitzpatrick. De Lara said the administration is considering options that include transferring works to other institutions or retaining one staff position to care for the collection.
The museum’s fate has become part of a larger debate over what universities owe their cultural institutions. DePaul has also drawn criticism for its plan to demolish four historic rowhouses to make way for a new athletic facility expected to cost more than $42 million. For many on campus, the contrast is hard to ignore: a museum built to serve both students and the public is being closed, even as the university moves ahead with a major sports project.
