Named after benefactors Edward and Bertha Rose, it offers temporary exhibitions, and it displays and houses works of art from its permanent collection of 9,000 objects.

[5][4] Before Brandeis graduated its first class in 1951, the university had already in its possession more than 300 paintings, including works by Stuart Davis, Fernand Léger, Milton Avery, and George Grosz.

"[11]: 13 Nevertheless, on November 6, 1991, eleven works were auctioned off at Christie's, bringing in $3.65 million which Brandeis said would be used for "an endowment that will pay for acquisitions, education and conservation".

[12]: 94 On January 26, 2009, Brandeis president Jehuda Reinharz announced in an email to staff and students plans to close the museum by the end of the summer in response to the global financial crisis of 2008–2009.

University spokesman Dennis Nealon called the surprise announcement a "hard decision", but said, "The bottom line is that the students, the faculty and core academic mission come first.

[19] In December 2010, Rush secured a position as founding director of the new Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University.

[25][26] After an emergency closing in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Rose Art Museum reopened exclusively to Brandeis University students, faculty, and staff in September 2020.

[27] On December 15, 2021, Brandeis University named renowned Israeli art historian and author Gannit Ankori as the new Director and Chief Curator of the museum.

[29] The museum's collection includes more than 9,000 objects, including works by such artists as Mark Bradford, Judy Chicago, Cindy Sherman, Helen Frankenthaler, Paul Gauguin, Nan Goldin, William Kentridge, Yayoi Kusama, Henri Matisse, Mona Hatoum, Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly, Willem de Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein, Marisol Escobar, Robert Motherwell, Robert Rauschenberg, Andrés Serrano, Jack Whitten, Yoko Ono, Pablo Picasso, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Andy Warhol.

[31] In 2015, conceptual artist Mark Dion completed his permanent installation, The Undisciplined Collector, in a small ground-floor gallery inside the Rose Art Museum.

The room-sized space is a recreation of a 1961-style residential "den", a wunderkammer or time capsule filled with authentic period artifacts gleaned from various Brandeis University collections.

[32] The collections on view include vintage record albums and magazines, cocktail swizzle sticks, Chinese snuff bottles, small sculptures, and other minor artworks, trophies, and souvenirs which were available in that year.

A set of three blue insert sheets catalogs many of the artworks and other items on display; copies of the booklet can be purchased for $5 from an attendant at the entry to the museum.