Undergraduate tuition, food and housing costs will increase by 4.4% for the 2024-25 academic year to finance University President Tania Tetlow’s self-commissioned oil portrait, according to an email sent to the Fordham community from John Buckley, vice president of enrollment, on March 13. The portrait will be hung up permanently in the Ildiko Butler Gallery at the Lincoln Center campus.
Inspired by the portrait of former University President Reverend Laurence J. McGinley, S.J., located in the lobby of the Leon Lowenstein building, Tetlow reportedly expressed to numerous administrative figures that her historical tenure, as the first laywoman to serve as president of Fordham University, deserved to be honored in a similar fashion.
“When I told her that portraits, especially oil portraits, were ridiculously expensive these days, she was initially discouraged,” Ava Maxwheel, art history professor, said. “But then, a couple days later, she came back to me with the idea of raising tuition to offset the expense. Controversial, but effective.”
According to Maxwheel, Tetlow also asked for the portrait to be financed through university funds. In an email addressing undergraduates, the president noted that: “Filing taxes on artwork is incredibly complicated and expensive, even given my undisclosed — but robust — salary. The university’s accountants contacted me and offered to take a stab at it, and in exchange, I’ll allow for the portrait to be housed and admired at the Lincoln Center campus.”
Tetlow chose modern Baroque-inspired and famed portraitist, Raul Karsten to paint her. Trained at the Milan Art Institute, Karsten’s portfolio work includes a series of portraits of widely-known, yet controversial, institutional figures within the American university system. His previous work includes portraits of endowment managers from different mid-size colleges — from the University of Texas at Austin to Syracuse University. According to Maxwheel, Karsten and Tetlow met over coffee at Blank Street Coffee this past week to begin the thought process of this portrait.
The news of this commissioned painting was not well-favored by Fordham’s student body.
“And I don’t care if I’m going to be in crippling debt for the rest of my adult life, as long as she gets her damn painting.”Riley Seaborn, FCLC ’24
“I get it, she’s a famous prosecutor and she brought a lot of attention to the Fordham community, but that honestly means nothing to me when I can only afford to spend $30 a week at Trader Joe’s,” Nina Leahy, Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC) ’25, said. “It’s tough to like Tania Tetlow when all I know is that she has an undisclosed salary and our tuition has increased by 10% over the past two years.”
According to recent research, up to 29% of college students across the United States reported experiencing food insecurity and hunger in the past 30 days. At a time when inflation is rapidly increasing and basic necessities are becoming less affordable for most families, it’s confusing to see why Tetlow and the rest of Fordham’s administration saw it fit to increase housing and food tuition prices for undergraduate students.
“Her outfits are great though, I will give her that,” Leahy, a fashion studies major, said. “Nice shoes, great silhouettes.”
However, some Fordham students had more positive interpretations of Tetlow’s new decision.
“Listen we may be seeing our university’s national ranking tank continuously, year after year, but Tania Tetlow is a girlboss,” Riley Seaborn, FCLC ’24, said. “And I don’t care if I’m going to be in crippling debt for the rest of my adult life, as long as she gets her damn painting.”
Tetlow is scheduled to begin sitting for Karsten’s portrait on March 23, and it is estimated to be finished over the summer, before the start of the 2024-25 academic year. There are tentative plans to feature an unveiling of the portrait in the Butler Gallery in August. Tickets will be announced soon and available for purchase via Ticketmaster.
