Dabney Hailey, the former curator of painting, sculpture and photography at the Davis Museum at Wellesly College, has joined the staff of the Rose Art Museum as the Director of Academic Programs, according to a July 1 BrandeisNow press release. The selection of Hailey to fill the position of director of academic programs comes after Emily Mello, the former director of education at the Rose, resigned in June 2009. Provost Marty Krauss announced in a campuswide e-mail Dec. 23, 2009 that she would actively begin searching for a new director of education. Krauss said in an interview with the Justice that a search committee headed by Roy Dawes recommended Hailey as an option to fill the position.

Dawes wrote in an e-mail to the Justice that Hailey was selected because she was reputed for the work she had done at the Davis Museum.

"[I] immediately embraced the possibility of her joining us at the Rose," Dawes wrote.

When asked why Hailey's position was titled director of academic programs rather than director of education, Dawes explained in his e-mail that the position of director of academic programs has been established in many college museums across the country in an effort to integrate art into University curriculums.

"We must have faculty and students more aware of what we have in the collection and what we intend to exhibit in the galleries and then provide them the ability to interact with both," Dawes wrote.

Hailey said in an interview with the Justice that her role as director of academic programs entails ensuring the integration of the exhibits and collections at the Rose with the University's academic curricula and student life.

"There's huge opportunity here to harness this collection for all kinds of educational goals," she explained.

When asked how she planned to fulfill this goal, Hailey explained that she would spend a significant portion of her time at Brandeis this coming semester "listening a lot," which she explained entailed meetings with both students and faculty.

"A lot of the students who come to the museum are Fine Arts majors, and I want to listen to what they do and how they can integrate art into their lives," she said.

Hailey also said she was excited to speak with students and find out what types of programs they wanted to pursue.

Krauss, who met with Hailey before Hailey was offered employment at the Rose, said in an interview with the Justice that she believed Hailey will be essential to establishing student opportunities at the Rose.

"She is going to be very valuable in the internship program that we offer at the Rose for undergraduate students, ... an incredibly influential aspect of many undergraduates experience here at Brandeis, and we want to build and strengthen that internship program," she said.

Hailey also emphasized the importance of meeting with faculty, explaining that she wants to find out "how the community thinks about art, how they don't, how to build bridges and how to integrate art into student life."

Krauss also said she is confident Hailey will succeed in her outreach efforts to faculty as well.

"I think she is a very creative person, and we have a lot of faculty that are very involved with the Rose already, and I think that she is going to reach out to faculty who have not necessarily seen connections with the Rose and try and develop some of those," she said.

Dawes also emphasized that the staff at the Rose "needed someone to help move us forward and beyond the challenges we have struggled with over the last year." The Museum became a source of controversy when University President Jehuda Reinharz announced in a campuswide e-mail Jan. 26, 2009 that the Board of Trustees had voted to close the museum and sell its paintings in an effort to amass revenue for the University after Brandeis suffered losses to its endowment and financial gifts from donors decreased.

In a later e-mail, Reinharz said that the Museum would not fully close but would become more "more fully integrated into the University's central educational mission." The University is currently embroiled in litigation over whether or not paintings will be sold, as Meryl Rose, Jonathan Lee and Lois Foster, three members of the Museum's Board of Overseers, filed suit against the University in an effort to maintain the Rose's art collection in July 2009. In May 2010, the University announced it was in talks with Sotheby's to consider alternatives to selling artworks.

Senior Vice President for Communications Andrew Gully said in a telephone interview with the Justice that no major developments in the lawsuit had occurred over the summer, and that there would be a better understanding of the turnout this fall.

The controversy over the Rose continued this summer, when four artists who were scheduled to display their work in the fall exhibit rescinded their offers. When asked about this situation, Dawes did not provide any comment but wrote that a fall exhibit titled "WaterWays" would begin Oct. 7. According to a statement Dawes sent the Justice, "'WaterWays' is an exhibition that will explore some of the artworks from the Rose collection that use water as subject, metaphor and muse.