University Reverses Lay-Off of Curator

Laid off earlier this spring by new management, the curator of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts last week said he will likely remain on the Harvard payroll for three more years.

But Roger Brandenberg-Horn, who had been told in April that he would lose his job on July 1, said he has been relieved of his duties as curator of the art exhibitions for the center.

Brandenberg-Horn, who uses a cane to help him walk, has been placed on temporary disability leave. He may later go on permanent disability and receive payments until his retirement in three years.

The curator thanked human resources professionals in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for fighting for him.

"I am greatly indebted to those in the administration who have sought to make me whole again," Brandenberg-Horn said in an interview last week.

The curator, however, said he will continue his fight with the center's new director, Senior Lecturer on the Visual Arts Robert G. Gardner, to save the center's Sert Gallery. Gardner, who took office last Thursday, wants to convert the gallery into an art studio. And it was Gardner who initiated the layoff of the curator in April.

"I've gotten no truth on the matter," Brandenberg-Horn said. "But it seems in my personal matter, someone has come down very strongly on Mr. Gardner."

Gardner and the chair of the department of Visual and Environmental Studies, Alfred F. Guzzetti, have repeatedly said that their decision to oust the curator and convert the gallery to studio space is in the best interest of the center and its patrons. They could not be reached for comment yesterday.

For the first time, Brandenberg-Horn last week raised the possibility of attempting legal action to get his job back, save the exhibition program, or both. He also wrote a letter to President Neil L. Rudenstine deploring the control that Gardner and other members of the VES department maintain over the Carpenter Center.

"The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts is for all the visual arts and it often does serve (through the exhibition of student work) the academic department it houses," Brandenberg-Horn wrote. "The center, however, should never be the puppet of its tenant, as it is now, or be forced by any means to submit to its tenant's self-serving needs."

Brandenberg-Horn, who has been designing exhibits in the center for 23 years, has formed his own grassroots organization, Save The Exhibition Program, and altered the Sert Gallery's main sign to say, "Save the SERT GALLERY Exhibition Program."

An impromptu petition drive headquartered in the gallery has netted more than 1,000 signatures, many of them from Graduate School of Design students and undergraduates in the department of Visual and Environmental Studies.

Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles has declined to comment on the matter, and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education Lawrence A. Buell, who chairs a committee evaluating the VES department, could not be reached for comment

Brandenberg-Horn, who has been designing exhibits in the center for 23 years, has formed his own grassroots organization, Save The Exhibition Program, and altered the Sert Gallery's main sign to say, "Save the SERT GALLERY Exhibition Program."

An impromptu petition drive headquartered in the gallery has netted more than 1,000 signatures, many of them from Graduate School of Design students and undergraduates in the department of Visual and Environmental Studies.

Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles has declined to comment on the matter, and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education Lawrence A. Buell, who chairs a committee evaluating the VES department, could not be reached for comment