NEW YORK, NY.- When I first learned that the theme for the 57th Venice Biennale, to be held in 2017, was to be “Universes within the Universe,” I thought of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University. I cherish the meaningful way in which the Rose melds the artistic mission of a liberal arts curriculum with the social justice mission of Brandeis. It is truly a universe within the university. During my time as president, I was privileged to sit on the Rose Board of Advisors. When I read that Paolo Baratta, President of the Venice Biennale, selected Christine Macel of the Centre Pompidou in Paris to be the director of the 2017 Biennale art exhibition because she is “a curator committed to emphasizing the important role artists play in inventing their own universes and injecting generous vitality into the world we live in,” I thought of the exceptional LA-based artist and Rose Board member Mark Bradford. Therefore, I am delighted that at next year’s Biennale, it is Bradford who will represent the United States with the Rose Art Museum and its director, Christopher Bedford, as commissioner of the United States pavilion.

When we re-opened the Rose to great acclaim in the fall of 2011, we knew that a number of significant tasks lay immediately ahead of us, such as recruiting a new director and — with that director — acquiring and exhibiting new works of art and re-building the museum’s Board of Advisors. Bedford, the Rose’s brilliant new director, joined us in the summer of 2012 and thankfully he was able to bring Mark Bradford into the Rose family. Through Bradford, in one stroke, the Rose gained a uniquely visionary artist to exhibit and a board member who would energize the university’s artistic life. Bradford’s exquisite and provocative “Father You Have Murdered Me” was an early major acquisition by Bedford for the Rose.

To be sure, Bradford’s extraordinary artistic reach alone — his combinations of collage with paint to create compelling abstractions that both challenge and attract us— would justify his selection to represent our country at the Biennale. But Bradford is so much more than his works of art, as remarkable as they are. To see him interact with students and other members of the university community and indeed broader community is to understand both the radical and the redemptive capacity of art. The exhibition at the Rose of Bradford’s multi-faceted show “Sea Monsters” in 2014 is a perfect case in point. These collage paintings and sculptures, although abstract, draw upon the tradition of ancient maps that used fantastical creatures to suggest realms that beckon beyond our reach, and yet ultimately point to the challenges of communities under stress. Sea monsters, to Bradford, became a ready symbol for “otherness.” As Bradford explains, “So my mind just kind of collapsed … sea monsters and otherness and South Central Los Angeles as being full of sea monsters. And Ferguson, I guess, now is full of sea monsters. Anything that we don’t understand.”

It was in front of “Sea Monsters” that Bradford held an unforgettable conversation on blackness, art and life experiences with a standing-room-only crowd of students, faculty and supporters. Bradford encourages even more than he challenges and he inspires even more than he encourages. He spoke of the importance of stepping outside of one’s own expertise and collaborating with others because of theirs, saying that, “It will humble you and it will give them a sense of purpose and strength.” Purpose and strength are precisely what I saw Bradford communicate to the students with whom he met afterward, many of whom came to the Rose and to art from other majors, fulfilling the goal of the liberal arts mission.

Bradford’s commitment to his art and his community are thoroughly intertwined. He was instrumental in establishing Art + Practice, allowing those transitioning out of foster care in South Central Los Angeles to find a place to gain practical skills and engage in creative pursuits. I have seen how he brings purpose and strength to the lives of these young people in LA, just as he did on a university campus in the Northeast. As Bradford reveals, “My art, I never could completely separate it from the social. I could never just have a hermetic studio life. It’s just part of me. I’ve always been so curious of everything that’s happening — social anthropology, social history.”

The Biennale next year seeks to celebrate the “important role artists play in inventing their own universes and injecting generous vitality into the world we live in.” I have seen how Mark Bradford helped us re-invent the universe that is the Rose Art Museum, a universe within a university, and in keeping with the theme of the Biennale, a “Universe within a Universe.” Americans can be justifiably proud and excited be represented by Mark Bradford and the Rose Art Museum in Venice next year.

Frederick M. Lawrence
Senior Research Scholar, Yale Law School
Professor of Politics and former President, Brandeis University