When Indiana’s Valparaiso University reopened its Brauer Museum of Art in 2022, it followed a two-year closure that had started with the COVID-19 pandemic. The school touted incoming director Jonathan Canning as a graduate of London’s Courtauld Institute who previously held high-level positions at Upstate New York’s Hyde Collection and the Loyola University Museum of Art in Chicago. 

Just two years later, the museum would close again, and Canning would be out of a job. This time, the school said that the closure was temporary (but gave no date on when the museum might reopen), but said that Canning was dismissed in a “restructuring” along with 14 other school employees, owing to falling enrollment and rising costs.

The school is, furthermore, at the center of a controversy over its plans to sell three valuable paintings, by Frederic Edwin Church, Childe Hassam, and Georgia O’Keeffe, sales which could total as much as $20 million. The school said it needs the funds to renovate freshman dormitories, but also defends the sale because, in an era of climate protesters targeting artworks, it claimed it could not keep them safe. (It moved the paintings to secure offsite storage to forestall soup-throwing demonstrations.)

Professional organizations have condemned any plans to sell the artworks to cover operational expenses, which is prohibited under their guidelines.

Channing, speaking to the Valparaiso Torch, has expressed deep skepticism about the university’s decision-making. 

The Brauer Museum of Art at Indiana’s Valparaiso University. Photo courtesy of the Brauer Museum of art.

“If the administration decided that it couldn’t afford to run the [Brauer], then you really have to question the decision that was made at the beginning of 2022 about reopening the museum,” Canning said. “[They went through the trouble] of doing a national search to find a museum professional to come, so what has changed between the spring of 2022 when I applied for the job, and the summer of 2024 that they can no longer afford one museum professional?”

“Given all that the Brauer did in the short time that I had it open—32 exhibitions and installations, over 20 student employees and over 13,000 visitors,” Canning argued, “it was the most cost-effective department at this university.”

While the university did call in consultants RPK Group to advise on its finances, the Torch pointed out, Canning argued that the consultants’ review did not include the museum and that RPK did not invite him to contribute any information to what the school is calling its Operational Sustainability Initiative.

Canning also said he defied the administration’s expectation that he would abandon the museum the moment he learned that his position was cut.

“They expected me to walk off campus immediately,” he said. “I was told my position was eliminated. I was supposed to hand over my keys, walk off campus and not come back for my things until I set up a date sometime in the future with HR. [But] I had students coming to work, students coming to open the museum, an artist coming to teach me how to clean and wax his sculpture that’s out on the grounds, and I was supposed to just disappear? Who was going to handle all of that? I refused to do that and I stayed working,” Canning said. 

“Students stayed with me for a bit to help me organize things and the Dean of the Library stayed with me the whole time,” he added. “We cleaned out waste paper baskets so as not to attract bugs, because when is [the next time] someone else is coming in?”

The Torch revealed that, during the 2020–22 closure, the museum faced problems including “water leaks, acidic canvases, improper storage and dangerously high humidity levels,” and expressed concern that those problems will arise again. 

“The university remains dedicated to pursuing opportunities that will ensure the highest quality experience for our students and the best possible future for our university as a whole,” said university spokesman Michael Fenton.