Hawk this gem? Unconscionable

The Rose Art Museum's jurisdiction extends across the whole of the 20th and 21st centuries. Museum director Michael Rush said, ''I've fallen in love with this collection.'' (Rose Art Museum/Brandeis University)

WALTHAM - The decision to close the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University and sell off its extraordinary collection smacks of panic. Panic, as everyone knows, is sometimes an appropriate response to reality. But usually it's not, and, either way, it's rarely edifying to watch.

Brandeis president Jehuda Reinharz told the Globe that the Rose "is a jewel," saying that Monday, when the university's board of trustees voted to close the museum, was "not a happy day in the history of Brandeis."

But what sort of jewel is it?

Right now, the Rose is the best place to go in the Boston area to see modern and contemporary art of the highest caliber, top-shelf work by such artists as Pablo Picasso, Willem de Kooning, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Morris Louis, Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, Roy Lichtenstein, Ad Reinhardt, and many more.

With its jurisdiction extending across the whole of the 20th and 21st centuries (it is particularly strong in postwar American art), the Rose has a much wider ambit than the Institute of Contemporary Art, which focuses on work made only in the last 20 or 30 years. And with the Museum of Fine Arts and Harvard Art Museum having placed most of their modern and contemporary art in storage as they undergo long-term renovations, the Rose has no serious rival when it comes to the display of such art.

"I've fallen in love with this collection," said Michael Rush, the Rose's director, when I went to the museum yesterday. "To see a collection of this kind turned into a monetary asset and dismantled is just terribly short-sighted."

"I'm in shock," added Rush, who was told the news Monday afternoon.

Is the Rose a "secret jewel" with limited "foot traffic," as Reinharz suggested?

"We may not have hundreds of thousands of people coming through our doors," said Rush. "But for a university collection, which has a different purpose anyway, we do pretty well. On top of that, we are always lending our works to other museums across the globe, so in reality huge numbers of people get to see these works."

The explanations offered by Reinharz and the university trustees are weak rationalizations. The fact is, they want to cash in on a world-class collection of art.

Reinharz lamented that "most of the great works we have, we are just not able to exhibit."

But this is simply wrong. It is true that there is as yet no space officially dedicated to displaying the permanent collection. But Rush has compensated by mounting substantial shows selected from the collection, shows that combine innovation with popular appeal and serious scholarship.

Late last year, for example, he drew on the collection to organize a survey of work by Surrealists such as Salvador Dalí, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, René Magritte, and Joan Miró, re-creating the atmosphere of a 1938 exhibition in Paris by dimming the lights and providing visitors with flashlights.

Other works from the collection are now on view in "Saints and Sinners," curated by Laura Hoptman, senior curator at the New Museum in New York, with pieces by artists as diverse as Georges Rouault, Ruscha, Dana Schutz, and Ugo Rondinone.

Thus the public has had the benefit of seeing frequent new hangs of a collection that is dazzling in its depth, especially considering the Rose has been open less than half a century.

The people who established the Rose "were so visionary," said Emily Mello, the museum's director of education, yesterday.

"These works," she added, gesturing at nearby paintings by Rauschenberg, Philip Guston, and Picasso, "are important monuments of the 20th and 21st centuries. They should be preserved for future generations, not sold off to private collectors."

How shocking, when you think about it, to resort to selling off art given by donors who, wanting their prized works to be made available to the public, have chosen the Rose Art Museum for that purpose!

If they are sold at auction, almost all of the museum's works are likely to end up in private hands. Whatever the sum raised by such a sale, it is sure to be a whole lot less than it would have been when the market was at its peak last year. So into the wound of the moral insult is rubbed the salt of poor timing.

I am not privy to the financial state of Brandeis University, and, as I said, panic is sometimes the only appropriate response.

But Brandeis's responsibility is not just to the institution. Being a custodian of great art is both a privilege and a grave responsibility.

"Is the ship sinking?" Rush asked, referring to the university. "If it isn't sinking, I think what they're doing is unconscionable. Unless your back is up against the wall and someone has a gun to your head, there's just no excuse turning cultural assets into currency and selling them off. It's a big mistake, because you can never go back."

It is more than a mistake. It is a scandal.

Sebastian Smee can be reached at ssmee@globe.com.