The toxic fallout from Rhode Island’s budget crisis just keeps spreading.

Earlier this month, officials at the University of Rhode Island announced that they were scuttling two of the school’s most popular cultural programs: the Fine Arts Center Galleries, which offer regular exhibits of contemporary art, and the Great Performances series, which presents a mix of classical music and folk and contemporary dance. Gallery director Judith Tolnick Champa and Great Performances coordinator Roxanna Tourigny were also told to clean out their desks.

The moves are part of a larger wave of cutbacks and staff buyouts at the university, which is facing an $11-million drop in state funding for the 2008-2009 academic year. Several sports, including men’s tennis, men’s swimming and field hockey, are also facing elimination.

Obviously, times are tough. But is killing off a pair of cost-effective, community-oriented arts programs really in the school’s — and the state’s — best interests?

Granted, I may not be the most impartial observer. I’ve known Tolnick Champa for more than 20 years and consider her one of the state’s true cultural treasures.

Still, I think URI’s budget-cutters are making a big mistake. In fact, I think the kind of artistically challenging, intellectually engaging, culturally diverse programming that both Tolnick Champa and Tourigny are adept at providing is more valuable now than ever.

Let’s start with a recent example. Last fall, an exhibit called “China seen by…” featured the work of a dozen or so contemporary photographers. About half were Americans who had either moved to China or who had traveled there to cover the country’s historic rise from economic backwater to 21st-century superpower. The rest were Chinese photographers with similar interests.

China, of course, is big news these days. Yet the show highlighted the country’s transformation in a way that many viewers, I suspect, had never seen before: the sprawling mega-cities that seem to have sprung up overnight, the massive public works projects that are transforming rural China, the huge factories that crank out billions of dollars worth of consumer goods.

At the same time, the show — and especially the work of the Chinese photographers — offered a glimpse of something that may be even more important. The Chinese, it seems, are fed up with the country’s headlong rush toward world domination. They may not mind China’s rising standards of living, but they hate the social and cultural chaos that has come with it.

Bottom line: Anyone who saw “China seen by…” probably left knowing more about the world’s most populous country than he’d ever find out on the nightly news.

One of the knocks against contemporary art, of course, is that it’s too obscure and esoteric for its own good. And some of the Fine Arts Center shows — all of which were organized by Tolnick Champa — were obviously aimed at more art-savvy audiences.

But shows such as “China seen by . . .” and “State of Siege,” a 2006 exhibit that explored the world of military re-enactors, were anything but esoteric. Rather than appealing to a privileged few, they tackled topics of general interest in a way that was both insightful and accessible.

And did I mention that admission to all of these shows is — or at least was — free?

To be honest, I’m less familiar with URI’s Great Performances series. (As a Providence resident, I’m more likely to attend performing arts events at Vets, Trinity or Rhode Island College.) Still, from what I’ve heard it was every bit as good as the school’s exhibition program.

According to the Great Performances Web site, the 2008-2009 season would have featured six events, ranging from award-winning Russian pianist Alexander Melinkov to the Luna Negra Dance Theater led by Cuban-born choreographer Eduardo Vilaro. The cost? About $80 for a season pass, with bigger discounts available for senior citizens and URI faculty and students.

In their defense, URI officials have said that cutting these programs will allow them to weather the state’s budget crisis while protecting the school’s “core mission” of educating students. But that makes sense only if you believe that art, dance and music have no educational value. And that, as any self-respecting liberal arts major will tell you, is nonsense.

(And it’s not as if nixing the two programs is going to save a lot of money. According to URI officials, the total savings, including salaries for Tolnick Champa and Tourigny, only come to $325,000.)

Still, the big losers aren’t the people who live and work on URI’s Kingston campus.

Instead, the real losers are South County residents. While local arts groups such as the South County Art Association and the Courthouse Center for the Arts can pick up some of the slack, many residents will find it difficult to satisfy their cultural cravings without driving to Providence.

For an area that has boomed in recent years — and where many residents are suffering from the double-whammy of gridlocked roads and higher gas prices — that’s a sad state of affairs.

Fortunately, there is some good news to report.

Supporters of the Fine Arts Center and Great Performances series have banded together to try and save the two programs. The group has held several meetings and has started a letter-writing campaign aimed at getting university officials to change their minds. There’s also a Web site ( www.uri.edu/artgalleries_save_the_ galleries) and a Facebook page devoted to the cause.

Speaking of letters, concerned citizens might also want to fire one off to their representatives in the General Assembly. After all, they’re the ones who got us into this mess.