Courtesy of Randolph College's Maier Museum of Art

"Men of the Docks," a 1912 painting by George Bellows, is one of the Randolph College pieces chosen to be auctioned.

Who is George Bellows?

• Bellows is an early 20th-century painter whose work reflects the gritty realism of the so-called Ashcan School.

What are his painting worth?

• He sold "Men of the Docks" (above) to the college for $2,500. Its worth today can only be guessed at, but another Bellows oil, "Polo Crowd," sold at auction for $27.5 million in December 1999 to billionaire Bill Gates.

Randolph College's Maier Museum of Art is expected to reopen today after being closed since Monday, when four prized paintings were removed and shipped away for auction, leading students to protest and the museum director to resign.

The Lynchburg college's board of trustees announced Monday that it would auction four of the museum's 3,500 pieces to help boost the finances of the cash-strapped, 116-year-old school. The to-be-auctioned works are reportedly worth an estimated $32 million to $45 million.

"This decision was made after months of deliberation and exploring every option available to us," board of trustees President Lucy Williams Hooper wrote in an e-mail to the college staff and students Monday. "We believe the decision ... while painful, is in the best interest of the college."

Four paintings -- George Bellows' "Men of the Docks," Edward Hicks' "A Peaceable Kingdom," Ernest Hennings' "Through the Arroyo," and Rufino Tamayo's "Troubador" -- were removed from museum walls Monday, sheathed in bubble wrap and loaded into a van. They will be auctioned in November by Christie's auction house in New York.

The move prompted museum director Karol Lawson to resign the following day. The college's intention to sell art also led the museum's associate director to leave earlier this year.

"We very much appreciate how she feels about the artwork," college spokeswoman Brenda Edson said Wednesday of Lawson. "The board has had to make decisions that are right for this college."

Edson said administrators will name an interim museum director.

The move comes after the 700-student campus was warned by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools for spending too much of its $140 million endowment. In response, the college has reduced staff, expenses and lowered its tuition discount for current freshmen. Men were also admitted to the formerly all-female campus this fall in an attempt to bump up enrollment.

Randolph's collection of paintings, prints, drawings and photographs has been valued at $100 million. Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton visited the campus in May and has reportedly shown interest in the collection or portions of it for the new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark. That museum, which Walton founded, is slated to open in 2009.

On campus Tuesday, news of the art auction led many students to protest by wearing black and pinning swatches of fabric to their clothes printed with the slogan "Not for sale."

Maggie Williams, a 21-year-old senior who works in the museum and is co-president of its student docent group, said 400 signs with similar messages were posted across campus Tuesday night, but had been removed by early Wednesday.

It wasn't known who took the signs down.

"Professionally, this is a huge leap to resign," Williams said of Lawson. "But you can't stay ... This has been so hard on her."

The decision has been hard on students such as Williams.

She visited the museum Wednesday, turned the corner into the gallery where "Peaceable Kingdom" had hung and saw empty space.

"It was so hard to look at that bare piece of wall and know what used to be there," she said.

Staff writer Kevin Kittredge contributed to this report.