DePaul Art Museum Advisory Board Urges University to Reverse Closure Plan, Citing Donor and Collection Concerns
A widening coalition is challenging DePaul University’s plan to close the DePaul Art Museum (DPAM), with the museum’s advisory board now issuing a sharply worded letter to senior administrators and trustees urging them to reconsider.
In the letter, members of the advisory board address DePaul president Robert L. Manuel, provost Salma Ghanem, other university leaders, and the board of trustees, objecting to the decision to permanently shutter the 40-year-old museum on June 30. The closure was announced last month.
Signed by advisory board chair Scott J. Hunter, a retired University of Chicago professor, the letter also bears the names of artists Brendan Fernandes, Rachel L.S. Harper, and Melissa Leandro; former Expo Chicago head Tony Karman; Sotheby’s senior vice president Gary Metzner; and art adviser Lynn Manilow. Many of the signatories have served on the board for more than a decade, and some trace their involvement to before DPAM moved into its current building, which opened in 2011.
“We 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,” the letter states, adding that the university is also, “even more problematically,” deciding after the fact what will be done with the museum’s collection.
That collection comprises roughly 4,000 objects, with an emphasis on international modern and contemporary art. DPAM began building its holdings in 1972, and the museum has become a notable steward of Chicago’s artistic histories, including works by artists associated with the Monster Roster and the Chicago Imagists. Among the figures cited are Roger Brown and Christina Ramberg, alongside other Chicago artists such as Candida Alvarez, Dawoud Bey, and Chris Ware.
Beyond the closure itself, the advisory board’s letter frames the decision as part of what it calls a “seemingly never-ending whirlwind of both uncertainty and poor decision-making by the University administration.” It describes DPAM as a “jewel” of the campus that has been left “battered and discarded,” despite what the board characterizes as a “massive effort” to keep the museum operating.
The board also argues that the process sits uneasily with DePaul’s public commitment to “Vincentian values,” a reference to the university’s 1898 founding by the Congregation of the Mission, a Catholic order known as the Vincentians and named for the 17th-century French priest Saint Vincent de Paul. In the letter, the advisory board contends that the university’s actions amount to a departure from those values.
A central concern is the future of DPAM’s collection and the obligations attached to it. The letter describes the situation as “galling,” noting that the advisory board had been working with DPAM director Laura-Caroline de Lara and DePaul’s development team to secure external gifts intended to help ensure the museum’s long-term stability. It also claims the university has not clearly accounted for its legal responsibilities regarding the collection, nor for the wishes of donors who contributed artworks to the institution.
The advisory board’s intervention follows another public rebuke issued shortly after the closure announcement. Two days after DePaul made its decision public, more than 3,750 faculty, staff, and students signed an open letter opposing the move. That letter criticized what it called an “Orwellian invitation to ‘re-imagine’ the arts by closing the building that houses them,” and argued that decision-makers were failing to recognize the museum’s academic and cultural value.
DePaul University’s press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The dispute arrives as DePaul faces broader financial pressures. The university has pointed to a significant decline in international enrollment, and in December it laid off 114 of its 1,493 staff members, a reduction of just over seven percent.
With the closure date approaching, the advisory board’s letter intensifies questions that extend beyond a single campus institution: how universities steward cultural assets built over decades, how donor intent is honored, and what is lost when a museum’s public-facing mission is treated as discretionary rather than foundational.
