Christopher Bedford, Director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, has announced two major grants, both for $100,000, from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.  The Warhol Foundation grant will support the exhibition, Lisa Yuskavage: The Brood, opening in September 2015. The Mellon Foundation grant will support three years of programming triggered by the hiring of a Curator of Academic Projects, an innovative position specifically designed to integrate the Rose’s collections and programs into teaching and learning at the university.  This is the first time that the Rose Art Museum has received a grant from either foundation.

The Brood will be American artist Lisa Yuskavage’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States in over 15 years. The exhibition will survey 25 years of painting by this artist whose work traverses styles, theories, thresholds and histories, advancing a boldly unique vision for the figurative tradition in painting and the potential relationship of the media to contemporary culture. The show will be accompanied by Yuskavage’s first museum catalogue in over a decade and the first multi-author catalogue of her career.  Following the Rose’s inaugural presentation of the exhibition, the show is expected to travel to three additional venues in the United States.

The exhibition and accompanying catalogue will reposition Yuskavage’s body of work and its relationship to feminism and the female body.  The Brood also represents an extraordinary opportunity to engage a broad and diverse constituency of students, scholars and the general public. Yuskavage will have a brief residency at the Rose, during which time she will mentor young artists and speak in a range of forums about her work. 

The Mellon-funded Curator of Academic Projects position will be housed jointly at the Rose Art Museum and Brandeis University’s Mandel Center for the Humanities (MCH), and will carry with it both teaching and curatorial responsibilities.  The curator’s main task will be to integrate and bind all phases of the Museum’s creative and scholarly activities to the University through programming supported by the Mellon Foundation.  Working with the MCH, this scholar-liaison will be well positioned to bring ideas born across disciplinary lines to bear directly on the Rose’s programs, exhibitions and acquisitions.  The position will enable the museum to be used as a living textbook for learning across disciplines, drawing on its collection of more than 8000 objects for the purposes of advancing research and inspiring creative thought.

Upon announcement of the two grants, Brandeis President Frederick M. Lawrence stated, “The Rose Art Museum has been, and remains, a true point of pride for Brandeis. Housing an extraordinary collection of modern and contemporary art demonstrating a continuing commitment to exploring and exhibiting creative and powerful works, the Museum is vitally important to our campus. These two important grants from influential foundations are endorsements of our goals for the Rose.” 

For more information, visit www.brandeis.edu/rose/ or call 781-736-3434