Museum Director Resigns Amid Art-Sale Controversy
October 3, 2007 | Read Time: 1 minute
Trustees of Randolph College, in Lynchburg, Va., voted on Monday to auction off four prized pieces of art from the school’s Maier Museum of Art to raise endowment funds, reports Artnet News.
The announcement and subsequent hasty removal of the artwork —which includes George Bellows’s 1912 piece, “Men of the Docks” — led the museum’s director, Karol Lawson, to resign in protest the following day, the newspaper says. According to the college, the sale of the art at Christie’s in New York this November could bring in over $30-million.
Lucy Hooper, president of the Randolph Board of Trustees, told the News & Advance, in Lynchburg, that the outcome of the upcoming Christie’s sale would determine whether or not the school would sell any more art from the Maier Museum.
