Rose Art Museum names a new director

Michael Rush will be the next director of Brandeis University's Rose Art Museum, the university has announced.

And though Rush won't start until Dec. 7, he's already plotting how to raise money for the institution's $12 million planned expansion.

''I was just talking with a major gallery owner who knows [architect] Shigeru Ban very well, and he offered to hold a fund-raiser at the gallery," said Rush by phone yesterday from New York.

Rush, 55, will take over from Joseph Ketner, who left the Rose last summer to become chief curator at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Rush will assume his new position about a year after resigning from the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, which he had run since 1999. He said he disagreed with the institute's foundation over the organization's direction.

In 2002, Rush hosted a talk at Brandeis in conjunction with the Rose's exhibition of art by Inigo Manglano-Ovalle. He's also nurtured relationships with Gerald Fineberg and Lois Foster, two key museum supporters, who have second homes in the Palm Beach area. Fineberg, the Rose's board chairman, was on the search committee that contacted Rush.

''He's a very, very intelligent person, he knows his artwork, and his credentials are great," Fineberg said yesterday. ''I think we're very fortunate, very lucky to get a man of that character."

Rush's writing has appeared in The New York Times and Art in America, and he's written three books, ''New Media in Art," ''New Media in Late 20th-Century Art," and ''Video Art." He founded the New Haven Artists' Theater as well as Seated Man in New York, where his partner, theater director Bill Castellino, lives. Both institutions present experimental art.

Rush also holds a doctorate in theology and psychology from Harvard. He's the first former Jesuit priest hired to run a museum at Brandeis, a Jewish-sponsored university.

Rush said he will work to create a stronger relationship between the school's academic community and the art museum. He says fund-raising for the expansion, which will add gallery, administrative, and storage space, will be an important piece of his job. The addition will probably be built in the next two years, according to a university spokesman.

As for exhibitions, Rush said he will not shy away from controversy. He points to a show at the Palm Beach ICA, ''Brooklyn!," which opened just before the attack on the World Trade Center.

''There was an installation of planes crashing into buildings," Rush said. ''People wanted us to shut it down. I took a very firm stance against that. I believe that artists can be prophets. I'm not interested in creating controversy, per se. I'm interested in what the best artists of today are doing. If that involves controversy, so be it."

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com.