The year 1991 is ending. A recession is setting in across the United States. Here at Brandeis, recent budget deficits have forced cuts. Administrators go into panic mode, and on Nov. 5, 1991, 14 paintings by the likes of Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec are auctioned at Christie's to the tune of $3.5 million. Brandeis community members and the Association of Art Museum Directors are outraged.Sound familiar?

"It is the reason that all the museum associations codified the rules in writing for deaccessioning," said Jonathan Lee, chairman of the Rose Art Museum's Board of Overseers. "So Brandeis here is going to be famous twice-we're going to be the poster child for bad cultural behavior."

While the Brandeis administration recently announced that the Rose will remain open to display its permanent collection in July, the University's Jan. 26 decision to consider selling works out of the Rose collection repeated history in a bitterly ironic way.

Though the source of considerable outrage at the time, the 1991 sale of several 19th-century paintings draws distinct contrasts with this year's bombshell. While the 1991 sale didn't exactly follow industry guidelines and the Rose was censured for a period of time following the sale, newly hired University president Samuel O. Thier negotiated the sale with the AAMD and the Rose bounced back from black-sheep status.

There are a couple of major reasons why the 1991 sale pales in comparison to this year's decision-besides the obvious fact that the Jan. 26 decision by the Board of Trustees permitted the administration to close the museum and liquidate its entire collection, with the proceeds going to the University.

One preliminary point of comparison is the fact that then-Rose Director Carl Belz participated in and approved the 1991 decision, whereas current director Michael Rush was not part of the discussion until after the Board's vote.

For instance, the paintings sold in 1991 were all 19th-century works, and while paintings by such masters as Renoir and Honoré Daumier are certainly fantastic for Brandeis' art history students to study, they were not central to the museum's core mission of creating a collection of midcentury modern art. The AAMD code of ethics allows museums to sell artworks that isn't central to the museum's core mission so long as the proceeds from the sale go directly into buying new artwork. Thus, the sale of paintings wasn't an issue-however, at the time, many in the art industry were concerned that the proceeds from the sale would go toward the University's operating budget, which would be far from ideal in the AAMD's point of view.

Although the proceeds from the 1991 sale went directly back to the Rose and not the University in general, they didn't exactly go straight into a fund for purchasing new art. While some of the money went into the Hays Acquisition Fund (named after the family who donated some of the artwork sold), a portion of the money went toward conservation projects at the Rose, and some, at the request of the Hays family, went into funding a yearly scholarship that Brandeis students, along with students from a number of other universities including Columbia and Harvard, can apply for to receive funding for research travels.

"[The AAMD] insisted that we go back and talk to the donors and sort of make things right, and that's what happened. We didn't do our homework up front, but we did go back and make things right," said Betsy Pfau '74, a 12-year veteran of the museum's Board of Overseers.

Despite the Rose's after-the-fact cooperation with the AAMD and its survival through its subsequent censuring (where the museum was not allowed to participate with other museums to loan and receive loaned artwork), many in the Brandeis community remain upset about the 1991 sale. The sale may not have made the front page of The New York Times art section or inspired a 60 Minutes segment about art industry regulations, but among Brandeis faculty and Rose staff, the sale certainly ruffled a lot of feathers.

Said Prof. Nancy Scott (FA), who specializes in 19th-century art, in a letter to President Thier in October of 1991, "I am not only angry about the decision to sell the fourteen works, but I am especially angered about the way in which it was handled. . In fact, I only learned of the specific works to be sold, as did my colleagues, from an article in the Boston Globe on September 23; and further from a student that same week, that the works had already been dispatched in early September to Christie's for the sale in November."

Scott went on to say in the letter, "I would have enjoyed seeing the Renoir out of the storeroom, where I have always had to view it on storage racks, and I simply wanted to see the Vuillard. It has been 'on loan' to the president of the Bank of Boston for some years now, and so when I asked to show it to students, I was told that it was not available to me. This was true of other of these [19th century] works, some of which were scattered in different locales over the campus."

Roger Kizik, preparator of the Rose from 1977 to 2002, said the Renoir "was always available in the storage room. We did not show it as often as [others] would like, [but] we made it available to all comers, even other New England colleges." As for the Vuillard, the Rose had "long-standing agreements with the Bank of Boston" and other institutions. However, Scott maintained that art history professors felt their access to the Rose's collection before the 1991 sale was limited.

Rose employees were also aghast at the recession-era sale of the 19th-century works. Lisa McDermott, the Rose's registrar from 1988 to 1992, said, "I'm sure there were lots of conversations and arguments that happened outside the level I was involved in. But the mood that descended on us all was horrible."

Though the Rose has been nearly self-sufficient financially for a number of years-the University pays for basic operating costs of the museum building, like heat and electricity-in 1991, the Rose did not fundraise quite as much as today and relied more heavily on the University's support. Later directors increased fundraising efforts in order to make the Rose self-sufficient and keep it that way. Said McDermott of the 1991 situation, "Belz was basically told that without a significant influx of cash the museum would be closed. . [Rose] staff received clear instructions that in order to keep doors open, artwork would need to be sold. None of us could afford to resign our jobs in protest of this move by the University, . so we strategized the best we could. We made a careful review of the holdings and determined that certain items that predated the major collecting focus of the Rose . [and] had significant enough value estimates that they could meet the goal for funds needed. . As a staff we were committed to maintaining the integrity of the collection as a superior example of 20th century and, specifically, post-war American art. Under the circumstances, there were no options left to us-either we sold paintings or we closed the doors."

According to McDermott, the Rose's staff felt that if the museum were to close due to an inability to support itself financially, the Rose's collection would be liquidated and the proceeds directed into the University's operating budget.

"When Carl Belz left [in 1998]," said Kizik, "they did seek someone who would be more comfortable with the fundraising role. And fundraising did increase [under subsequent directors.]" Belz, who worked as an art history professor before being promoted to the directorship, which he held for 23 years, was "a great professor, but maybe not a great schmoozer," Pfau. Belz said, who specialized in contemporary art, taught a class in either art history or museum studies every semester.

"That was wonderful," Prof. Susan Lichtman (FA) said. "And he would teach out of the museum."

When Belz became director, said Pfau, "there was no graduate program to go to to learn how to be a director. . Now people learn how to become professional managers of art museums, and it's a management role as well as an art historian and a curatorial-you need a lot of different skills to be an art museum manager. But it was different when he took it over."

Indeed, the Rose's deaccessioning history has been quite different to what we've seen this year. The University's involvement of Rose staff in the decision to sell a few pieces to bolster the Rose's finances, in contrast to the closed-door Jan. 26 decision to liquidate the museum's collection to help pull the University out of its financial woes, created an unfortunate but ultimately surmountable situation from which the Rose rebounded. Time will tell whether the Rose will recover from the Jan. 26 Board of Trustees decision or whether the museum will ultimately be closed for good and the art sold to shore up the University's budget deficit.

Summing up the negative publicity the 2009 decision has created, Lee said, "We're world-famous. And we'll be famous again.