| Brauer Museum of Art | |
| Dissolved: | 2024 |
| Location: | Valparaiso University Center for the Arts, Valparaiso, Indiana, United States |
| Type: | Art museum |
| Key Holdings: | Largest collection of works by painter Junius R. Sloan |
| Collections: | 19th- and 20th-century American art, world religious art, and Midwestern regional art |
| Collection Size: | 2700 |
| Owner: | Valparaiso University |
The Brauer Museum of Art was an art museum at Valparaiso University, a private university in Valparaiso, Indiana. It was home to a collection of 19th- and 20th-century American art, world religious art, and Midwestern regional art. It was located in the Valparaiso University Center for the Arts (VUCA). Prior to the museum's opening, the university's collection was housed and displayed within several buildings across campus. It was named the Brauer Museum of Art in 1996 to honor the collection's long-time director and curator, Richard H. W. Brauer. The university began exploring selling parts of its art collection in 2023, to significant controversy and adverse legal action, and closed the museum in the summer of 2024.[1]
The collection of the museum included landscape paintings by Frederic Edwin Church, Asher B. Durand, John F. Kensett and largest known collection of works by painter Junius R. Sloan. Large late 19th-century paintings by T. Alexander Harrison and Elizabeth Nourse; Impressionist paintings by Karl Anderson, Childe Hassam and Robert Reid, and urban realist paintings by William Glackens and John Sloan also comprised some of the Brauer Museum's permanent collection of over 2,700 pieces.
The Brauer Museum of Art held 150 photographs and seven silkscreen prints by Andy Warhol, including an iconic soup can painting.[2]
The museum also held early modernist paintings by John Marin, Walt Kuhn and Georgia O'Keeffe. Other contemporary works included artists such as Elaine de Kooning, Ed Paschke, Chuck Close, Diego Lasansky,[3] Dale Chihuly, Frank Dudley John Himmelfarb, and Ansel Adams.
In February 2023, The Brauer came under fire for plans to sell three major works from its collection by Frederic Edwin Church, Childe Hassam, and Georgia O'Keeffe to fund improvements to a Valparaiso University dormitory.[4] The university closed the museum entirely and fired its director in the summer of 2024.[5]
The Brauer Museum frequently hosted special exhibitions and events. Such events have featured the works of such artists as Ansel Adams and Salvador Dalí.