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The Rose Art Museum this week announced it’s fall 2010 exhibit, “Atmospheric Conditions,” featuring the works of Eric Fischl, April Gornik and Bill Viola. The announcement follows 14 months of uncertainty concerning the museum’s future after the board of trustees unanimously voted to sell a portion of the museum’s artwork to help close a then $80 million budget gap within five years.

“Atmospheric Conditions” will be housed in the Foster and Lee galleries of the museum, with Fischl and Gornik’s work in the Foster Gallery and Viola’s in the Lee Gallery. Another exhibit titled “water ways” will be housed in the Rose building of the museum and will exclusively feature works from the permanent collection.

“Atmospheric Conditions” will mark the first time the museum will exhibit works not from the permanent collection since spring 2009. This comes as good news to members of Brandeis’ art community who worried that the board’s intent to sell artwork would cripple the museum.

Indeed, directly following the initial announcement about The Rose last February, the museum’s staff was halved from six to three when its executive director, education director and registrar left.

The museum has only recently begun to regain staff members, with Kristin Parker joining as collections manager and registrar in March. Provost Marty Krauss has stated in university-wide e-mails that a search committee is reviewing applicants for an education director; however the position has yet to be filled.

There have been no attempts to fill the position of executive director, with Director of Museum Operations Roy Dawes as the museum’s top position.

Dawes said he is still unsure of how long “Atmospheric Conditions” would be exhibited at the museum. Traditionally, the museum houses an exhibit per semester; however in 2009-2010 the museum showed an exhibit of its permanent collection, which opened in October, for the entire year.

“No matter what happens, we’ve gone from a complete stop last year to a collections exhibit to an exhibit of upper-tiered artists,” he said. “This will continue the tradition of wonderful exhibits at The Rose.”

The university is currently being sued by three donors to The Rose Art Museum in order to stop the sale of art. The trial is scheduled for Dec. 12 and 13.