Joe Kennedy

Joe Kennedy is routinely named the region's best writer by readers of The Roanoker magazine.

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LYNCHBURG -- The Maier Museum of Art at Randolph-Macon Woman's College sits at the eye of an academic and art-world hurricane.

College officials are contemplating the sale of some of its renowned, 3,500-piece collection of American art to boost the school's ailing, $140 million endowment fund.

College alumnae and students, plus art-loving Lynchburg residents, oppose the idea passionately.

The college's interim president, Virginia Hill Worden, who graduated from the school in 1969, provides background. An organization called Preserve Educational Choice questions her assertions in detail.

But the art does most of the talking.

Only 67 pieces hang in the Maier at the moment, and some of those are from elsewhere.

Still, there aren't many places in this part of the world where you can stand alone and enjoy paintings like Winslow Homer's "Paris Courtyard" or George Bellows' "Men of the Docks."

Tiny percentage

The Maier's four small galleries drew some 7,400 visitors last year, including schoolchildren and repeats. Most of its works are stored on vertical racks in a climate-controlled room, away from public view.

At most, Worden says, a dozen works would be sold or put in some sort of partnership to raise money for the college.

As few as two or three pieces might be affected.

Yet opponents' e-mails boil with such anger you would think the whole collection was at risk.

Stephanie Klein-Davis | The Roanoke Times

Kim Sheldon, who works with the Prime Time Adult Programs, walks along a hall lined with artwork at Randolph-Macon Woman's College. The painting at right, one of many works that hang throughout the school, is "Bandaged Egg" by Nancy Witt, Class of 1952.

Hard times dictate hard choices and hard choices create hard feelings.

"It has been a roller coaster of emotions," said Worden, in her office on a sunny day last week when the school's red brick walls and buildings and leafy grounds look their best. "It has never been boring."

How about painful?

"I choose not to take this personally," she said, with good humor, "but I've done easier things in life."

Misguided effort

There is a story behind the passions, and it is not a pretty one. Attempting to preserve its mission as a college for women, the school spent too much of its endowment annually, in part by granting too many tuition discounts, Worden said.

The goal was to attract quality female students and continue operating without making cuts that might affect its academic programs.

The problem, Worden said, is that the college fought the good fight for too long. It stayed one-sex while many others went coed.

As a result, "We are grappling with issues in the marketplace. ... We can't turn around on a dime."

On July 1, the school's name will become Randolph College. In September, it will admit its first male students -- 57 of them.

Those two changes hurt and angered many alumnae and others. The uproar, including opponents' charges of financial malfeasance, prompted the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to include a financial review in a 2006 review of two new graduate programs.

The review uncovered "absolutely no evidence" of financial malfeasance, Worden said, but it found a spending rate that was too high and an operating deficit of $4.5 million last year, plus other shortcomings. The college was well aware of those, Worden said.

The college was placed on warning. It has two years to improve the picture or face probation or possibly even lose its accreditation.

"We now have to make some tough decisions," the president said.

Auction houses and other entities have visited the Maier to make appraisals. The attorney general's office has been kept abreast of developments.

Opponents have kept up their objections.

The college is not the first to look at artwork as a money-generating asset.

Good investment

The collection dates to 1907, when Louise Smith, an art and French professor, directed a group of students to William Merritt Chase, a top New York portrait artist.

The students wanted to commission a portrait of the college president. Chase took the commission.

Louise Smith died in 1928 and left the college a trust fund to purchase more art.

Worden remembers when prized artworks hung throughout campus buildings. Their rapidly rising value made security paramount.

While paintings still adorn the walls of campus hallways and rooms, the priciest ones are tucked away in the Maier, which was built originally by the U.S. government as a bunker for masterworks from the National Gallery of Art during a war or nuclear attack.

The government donated the building to the school in 1976.

On Thursday its walls held works by Andrew and Jamie Wyeth, Grandma Moses and others, including John Sloan's "Sun and Wind on the Roof."

Admission was free, as usual. The museum's summer hours are Wednesday to Sunday from 1 to 4 p.m.

That's a bargain by any art-lover's lights.

As for the college, an outsider can only appreciate the various points of view and hope the school succeeds.

"It feels like a lot of loss right now," Worden said. "We view it as growing pains."