Contract issue to close Friends of Art Bookshop

The Friends of Art Bookshop will close this summer due to a conflict with University policy.

An email from Friends of Art President Laurel Cornell said the bookshop “must close because its existence violates the contract which Indiana University has with Barnes and Noble for the sale of books.”

Founded in 1968, the bookshop in the School of Fine Arts has donated more than $30,000 every year to benefit fine arts education at IU, according to the FOA website, primarily through assisting graduate research and funding undergraduate scholarships.

The bookshop has a tentative final date of Aug. 1.

The FOA may still operate in the future, Cornell said, though the bookshop has existed for 45 of the FOA’s 48 years on campus.

“The Friends of Art can continue to exist as an organization, and can continue with our mission, but to do so we must do a great deal of hard work together to imagine our future as an organization,” Cornell said. “We thank those who had the vision to realize that selling scholarly books on art and design could serve a number of purposes."

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