Chicago's Depaul Art Museum To Close After 40 Years

The DePaul Art Museum in Chicago, founded in 1985 and part of DePaul University, will close at the end of its current fiscal year, on June 30. The school, which faces considerable financial challenges, announced the closure in an announcement to the community Thursday morning.

In December, the school laid off 114 out of 1,493 staffers, a greater than 7 percent cut, due to what it called a significant drop in international enrollment, according to WTTW News, which noted that the school had sought to cut some $27.4 million in spending. A report published this month by progressive think tank New America revealed that more than three dozen universities, including DePaul, had steered lower-income students to take out“hefty student loans while offering big tuition breaks to students from wealthier families,” reported a local Fox affiliate. Founded in 1898, the private school was established by the Vincentian order and offers over 300 degree-granting programs.

Other universities have come under fire from the public for decisions to shutter their museums or sell off parts of their collections in response to fiscal challenges, including, in recent years, Indiana's Valparaiso University and Pennsylvania's Albright College.

“It's a huge loss to have this go,” said a source from the local museum community who asked not to be named.“It has come to be viewed as a surprisingly important museum in the ecosystem. It is small and willing to do things other museums and even other university museums are not so readily able to do.”

Sited in the city's Lincoln Park neighborhood, the museum resides in a building opened in 2011 and designed by Antunovich Associates. It boasts a collection of some 4,000 objects, with a focus on international modern and contemporary art, which it began amassing in 1972. It boasts strong holdings of artists from the Windy City's Monster Roster and the Chicago Imagists, including Roger Brown and Christina Ramberg, as well as many other Chicago artists, from Candida Alvarez to Dawoud Bey to Chris Ware.

The earliest work in the collection is a 16th-century painting of the Madonna and Child, though the holdings date primarily to the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. The collection includes work from North America, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and Asia.

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