Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Brandeis University’s decision to close the Rose Art Museum and sell its $300 million collection in an ailing economy has provoked acid comment from art experts and historians who further question the institution’s conduct.

“The message that they are sending is philistine in the extreme,” said Marilyn Perry, president emerita of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, which promotes the conservation of European art.

The museum, founded in 1961 and located on the Waltham, Massachusetts campus, contains 7,200 works, including paintings by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, and photographs by Cindy Sherman. It is among the strongest postwar collections in New England.

Brandeis said the museum was closing “to preserve the university’s educational mission in the face of the historic economic recession and financial crisis.”

Museum director Michael Rush, surprised by the news, said “it’s like a death. I feel it’s unthinkable.”

The museum’s board is “discussing options about how to reverse this,” he said without elaborating.

Art experts argue that the collection is too valuable to flood the market when prices have taken a dive.

“It’s such bad timing for this,” said painter James Rosenquist, a longtime Rose supporter. “They must be really hurting.”

Money and Inspiration

The bulk of the collection’s value stems from the purchase of 21 works in 1963 with a $50,000 gift from New York lawyer and collector Leon Mnuchin and his wife, Harriet Gevirtz-Mnuchin.

Mnuchin’s son, Robert Mnuchin, worked at Goldman Sachs for 33 years and is now an art dealer in New York.

“He had the money and I had the inspiration,” said Sam Hunter, 86, the Rose’s founder and first director.

“I am saddened and offended that they want to sell the paintings,” Hunter said. “It’s very low thinking.”

The collection is worth about $300 million, he said.

Hunter and Leon Mnuchin bought work from artists such as Warhol and Lichtenstein when they were starting out, and more established names like Robert Rauschenberg -- many costing $2,000 to $5,000 apiece, he said.

The paintings have escalated in value. Lichtenstein’s 1963 “Forget It! Forget Me!” with a blonde woman scolding a man, is worth around $35 million, dealers said. Rauschenberg’s 1961 “Second Time,” a drippy painted collage in pinks and reds, is worth about $15 million. Both are in the Rose.

University spokesman Dennis Nealon declined to discuss details of the auction.

Prior Sale

This is not the first time Brandeis has dipped into its collection. In 1991, the Rose auctioned 11 impressionist and modern art paintings and one American art painting at Christie’s International in New York, fetching $3.72 million. The sale was condemned then by the Association of Art Museum Directors, whose guidelines forbid museum sales for anything other than to fund new acquisitions.

In a statement, the AAMD said it is “shocked and dismayed” by plans to close the Rose.

The university’s endowment is down about 20 percent this year from a high of about $712 million, according to a university source familiar with the numbers.

Brandeis has a budget shortfall of $10 million for the current fiscal year, spokesman Nealon said. He said the museum attracts only 13,000 visitors on average each year -- about 36 people daily.

Checking Restrictions

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley will check each piece in the collection for donor restrictions, spokeswoman Emily LaGrassa said.

“If there were no restrictions, the university is free to sell the art,” she said. If restrictions were attached, Brandeis must ask living donors for permission to sell or go to court if a donor is deceased, she said.

About 85 percent of the collection was donated, so the process will be lengthy, LaGrassa said.

“By failing to acknowledge and respond to the fact that these were donations, and represent part of the world appreciation of Brandeis University --- they are injuring their own reputation and presence in the larger world,” said Kress Foundation’s Perry, who also wondered why art isn’t considered part of the education process.

“It’s essential that students have access to real works of art,” she said. “It’s pretty obvious these are touchstones of our civilization. By subtracting the works of art from a college environment, you are betraying an enormous trust -- the trust of the student who attends, the donor who gives and society in a larger sense who believe that a university is a place that our values are passed on.”

Bottom Line

  “They are saying that civilization doesn’t matter in the name of some kind of bottom line,” she added.

The backlash is likely to continue.

“The Rose is truly a gem amongst New England museums,” Malcolm Rogers, director of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, said in an e-mail. “This vibrant city cannot afford to lose any of its cultural institutions or their masterpieces.”

To contact the reporter on the story: Lindsay Pollock in New York at lindsaypollock@yahoo.com.

Last Updated: January 29, 2009 00:00 EST