Dear President Manuel, Provost Ghanem, and Executive V.P. Sidler,

We were distressed to receive the news that DePaul’s administration intends to close our art museum. Leaving aside the Orwellian invitation to “re-imagine” 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. We submit this open letter for your consideration in an attempt to make that value evident.

Publicly available works of art provide a profound service for any human community, and this is especially true of a university community. For a population that devotes itself daily to producing the conditions under which our students can acquire knowledge and skills, become better thinkers, and question their own presuppositions and biases, a museum is an inestimable resource. More than just a building on campus housing a collection, it places before us objects that by definition depart from the rigid logic of utility and challenge the viewer with the extra-ordinary. With this, the museum adds another dimension to campus life, a dimension that is a necessity, not a luxury, for an institution committed to its students’ flourishing as thoughtful, curious, imaginative, empathetic persons, in the Vincentian sense.

We urge DePaul’s administration to reconsider closing DPAM on two grounds—1) on the basis of the internal and substantive pedagogical value that the museum’s collection and curated shows have for our students, and 2) on the basis of the external contribution that the museum makes toward bolstering DePaul’s profile as an institution so committed to the arts that it built an “arts corridor,” which links DPAM to the recently constructed Music School, Arts and Letters building, and Theater School. For our educational mission and for our reputation as a unique institution, we, the undersigned, believe the administration should walk back this unsettling and surprising course of action. Indeed, DePaul’s pledge to engage in cooperative decision-making between the administration and faculty demands that Faculty Council be given an opportunity to weigh in on the deliberations about this important, ultimately curricular, issue. We entreat the administration to take this step before a final decision is made.

Even given the university’s current budgetary shortfall and consequent need for belt-tightening at various levels, the plan to repurpose the DPAM building (without specific details) appears to us short-sighted, wrong-headed, and grounded in some deeply disappointing principles of prioritization. With the headwinds we are facing in higher education today and the forces that push us toward lowering academic standards, toward introducing education-antagonistic tools and practices, toward turning the university into a professional school, this is the very moment to be encouraging our students to see the enormous human value of the arts, not turning our collective back on them.

Sincerely,