In his last couple of posts on his blog, Modern Art Notes, Tyler Green has been following the story prompted by the suggestion, made by some regents at the University of Iowa, that the university sell Mural, its 1943 Jackson Pollock masterpiece. The painting, given to the University of Iowa’s Museum of Art by Peggy Guggenheim in 1959, defines the collection of UIMA. It’s an iconic work of art, marking the pivotal moment in Pollock’s career when he invented a radical new kind of pictorial space — the “all-over” painting.

With UI facing repairs for the damage to its campus caused by the June floods, estimated to cost well over $200-million, a painting like the Pollock must be an awfully tempting goodie. UI regent (and former NBC News president) Michael Gartner’s words were ominously simple, however. He said he wanted to know the value of the painting, adding that he wasn’t “proposing the painting be sold, but that it would be good for the regents and the university to be aware of what options are out there as UI faces major expenses in flood recovery.”

Huh? What’s the point in finding out the value if not to sell it? The museum already knows its insurance value ($100-million). Obviously the question was aimed at finding out what it would bring at auction, and was greeted with outrage by the museum and its supporters.

Many students and faculty members don’t even know whether or not their college or university has an art museum. But for anyone the least bit interested in art, a college art museum offers the chance to fall in love with a painting in between classes, or study original works of art, in the flesh, while taking art courses. Some colleges and universities possess astonishing collections — Smith, Williams, Harvard and Yale, for example. Iowa’s collection, though not on this level, is solid. More to the point, its Pollock is a single, incalculably great treasure.

Perhaps UI will back away from plucking the tempting apple hanging in its garden. It should remind itself that its museum is a member of the AAM (American Association of Museums), and must abide by the rules regarding deaccessioning a work of art from a collection. The AAM permits deaccessioning only under the strictest guidelines, and requires any money earned from a deaccessioned work to be applied only to the acquisition of new works of art.

The university should take a long, hard look at what their mission is, in the long run, even as they face the terrible problems caused by the floods. Works of art in college and university museums were never meant to be commodities. Instead, they are objects testifying to the meaning of our culture that were placed in the trust of college and university museums for future generations to ponder. It’s imperative that they never break that trust.