On October 8, over 100 protesters queued up outside the now-shuttered DePaul Art Museum (DPAM) in Chicago, as reported by The DePaulia, DePaul University’s student newspaper. The demonstration aimed to send a message to the university’s leadership, calling for the reopening of the museum, which ceased operations in June.
In an open letter published in February, DePaul’s president Rob Manuel, provost emerita Salma Ghanem, and executive vice president Sherri Sidler, revealed the university’s plans to close DPAM. They noted that the decision was made to preserve the university’s long-term financial sustainability.
Soon after, museum supporters published another open letter opposing the closure, which has now gathered nearly 4,000 signatures. The letter describes DPAM, which used to be free and open to the public, as a space that “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.”
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The museum’s longstanding director Laura-Caroline de Lara and museum studies fellow Isabella Wang oversee DPAM’s current operations, which consist of supervising class visits. De Lara, who was present at the protest, told The DePaulia that DPAM’s closure has left “a hole there in terms of the culture for students and faculty on our campus, and within the Chicago cultural arts scene.” In the previous year, DePaul had allocated $426,000 for the museum, and de Lara managed to fundraise an additional $319,000.
Protesters outside the museum on October 8 expressed frustration at the university’s underfunding of the arts and partiality to sports, noting that DePaul broke ground on a new $42 million sports complex just weeks earlier. Following the protest, the university issued a statement to the Chicago Sun Times and public radio station WBEZ, noting that they welcome “this peaceful demonstration in support of the arts in Chicago.”
The statement explained that a task force is reviewing plans for the future of DPAM. The university currently has no plans to sell the museum building or its collection. Certain collections remain available to view by appointment. De Lara told The Art Newspaper that she is currently working on loan agreements with other institutions for specific artworks in DPAM’s collection.