The latest figures to add their voices to the chorus that has spoken out about Brandeis University's decision to sell artworks from the collection of its Rose Art Museum are three prominent art-world leaders — and alumni of the school.

The three museum leaders — Adam Weinberg, director of the Whitney Museum of American Art; Gary Tinterow, chairman of the department of 19th-century, modern, and contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Kimerly Rorschach, director of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University — have written an open letter to the university that is now posted on the museum's Web site.

"We spent our formative years learning in the Rose," the letter says. "This was where we decided to devote our professional lives to studying art, and to helping others feel the excitement we had discovered in these galleries."

The letter goes on to outline how university art museums serve to "educate thousands of students in virtually every topic and discipline, including medicine and law," as well as the general public, and how the institutions' assets must be "held in trust for future generations of students."

"We fully understand that the current economic situation is perilous, and wrenching decisions have to be made," they wrote. "But by announcing this extreme measure, Brandeis University has shaken confidence in its educational mission, threatened a covenant established with thousands of donors, and set a sad and troubling example to other institutions."

The letter ends: "We can only hope that Brandeis will now revisit its decision. If not, we all stand to lose."