After 20 years in operation, New York’s Rubin Museum of Art will close in 2024. The closure was described this way: “We are closing the building so that we can reallocate these resources to deliver an ambitious global plan to achieve wider impact while also allowing the museum to continue its work over decades. On a more sustainable path this year, items in the collection will not be sold—in fact, the Rubin Museum has just announced the acquisition of Tenzin Gyurmey Dorjee, Shraddha Shrestha. Shraddha Shrestha) and Shushank Shrestha – but if you want to see these and other works, you will find them in exhibitions at other institutions in the United States and abroad where loans may be made. The basis of the decentralized “museum without walls” model.
The Rubin Museum is far from the only art museum to close in 2024. Post-pandemic declines in attendance, fundraising and retail sales. The University of New Hampshire has closed its art museum, the result of cost cuts imposed by university President James Dean, Jr., which resulted in the layoffs of 75 of the institution’s 3,700 employees to make up for $14 million. dollar budget gap. “We need to support our academic programs,” Michelle Dillon, dean of the university’s Faculty of Arts, told the Observer. “There’s very little that can be cut, and I just think the museum is worth more.” None of the museum’s 2,500-piece collection has been sold, or is expected to be sold, she said. “It’s not that we haven’t been asked. Since the news broke that the museum will be closing, I’ve been getting a lot of inquiries from people who want to buy things – collectors, dealers, auction houses, non-profit organizations. Instead, items from the museum’s collection will be displayed in buildings around campus. among things.
Outside of the arts, two California car museums permanently closed last year — the Driving Museum in El Segundo and the Murphy Automotive Museum in Oxnard — which could also be attributed to financial constraints. Insurance premiums are up 20 percent from previous years, as are building rents (the museum does not own its 14,000 square foot of the building) “over a dollar a square foot.” He dedicated eleven years to the museum, and for the past three years he has “tried to find someone to take it over,” but without success. The museum has a collection of forty cars, most of which are privately owned and repossessed. “The museum itself owns five cars,” he said, “and two of them have been sold so far. When we sell the others, we will be able to pay off the outstanding debt.
The late Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen’s Living Computers: Museums + Labs in Seattle also closed permanently in 2024, as the coronavirus pandemic forced what was supposed to be a temporary closure of the venue and its collection of vintage items. Machines, documents and other technological artifacts from the competition are up for auction.
How often do museums close?
If you cry when the museum closes, expect to cry a lot. Museums are a broad category of primarily not-for-profit institutions that maintain and display a collection of artifacts and other items of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance, including historic buildings, zoos, and aquariums, with a regular schedule of opening and closing There is more to sex than people think. To make matters worse, the definition of “museum” is becoming increasingly loose. The Marble Museum in Banning, California (which closed in 2021 after 8 years) and the Morbid Anatomy Museum in Brooklyn (which closed in 2016 after 3 years), have never, according to their founders and creative staff, Breaking even on any given month (director Joanna Ebenstein) might just be a novel adventure. There are also many “museums” across the country that are nothing more than Instagrammable experiences, like the Museum of Ice Cream.
The Norman Rockwell Museum in Rutland, Vermont, closed in 2021 after 50 years, citing owner Colleen Schreiber’s age (in her 80s) and health issues ( Her diabetes) limited her ability to maintain the museum’s operations. However, she told the Observer that a buyer has expressed interest in taking over the museum and hopes to restart it in a new location in the near future.
It’s worth considering that some museums may have a natural life cycle. The Powers Museum in Carthage, Missouri, closed in 2021 after 38 years in operation. The museum has what Kavan Stull, the previous chairman of the board of trustees, called a “vast collection,” including newspaper clippings, letters, photographs, period clothing and furniture representing the Carthage period from 1870 to 1940, most of which Collected by the late Marian Powers Winchester. Winchester left behind the money to build the museum and the endowment to operate it, but costs kept rising — “It needed a new roof and air conditioning, and mowing the grass cost money,” Stull said — and the funding was just beginning. Start to drain out. Donations from the community were small, few and far between, so it had to close.
Closing a museum can be complicated
There is, of course, a procedure for closing museums. The Board of Directors is required to take a formal vote to dissolve the institution and then develop a plan to transfer the assets (buildings, furniture and equipment, collections) to one or more other nonprofit institutions (federal law requires tax-exempt charitable nonprofits) to be Dissolve “distribute its remaining assets solely to another tax-exempt organization”) while paying off any remaining debts, perhaps with those assets. The plan is submitted to a particular state’s attorney general’s office; that office typically has a nonprofit and public charities division that reviews submissions to ensure that board members did not breach fiduciary duties or otherwise commit fraud. Once approval is granted, the actual dissolution begins.
Clothes from the Bowers Museum collection were moved to the Joplin Mining Museum, while the furniture was moved to a Joplin nonprofit that restores old homes. There is an entrance counter at the Harry S. Truman Birthplace Historic Site in Lamar, Missouri. The museum display cases were donated to the Flying Freedom Museum in Joplin, the bookshelves were donated to the Neosho Newton County Library in Missouri, and the photographs and newspaper clippings were donated to the library in Carthage. The museum building itself was donated to the Carthage Public Schools, which repurposed it as an alternative school for students with learning difficulties. There was a small amount of money left in the bank, which was passed on to other nonprofits: a Civil War-era house that needed roof repairs ($15,000) and a community foundation for scholarships ($25,000). “And there’s a piano,” Stull said. “I sold it.”
In some cases, the entire collection is transferred to another institution that agrees to display or dispose of the items in some way. The Philadelphia Museum of History transferred its 130,000 city-historical artifacts to Drexel University, while the Higgins Armory’s 2,000-piece arms and armor collection was transferred directly to the nearby Worcester Museum of Art in Massachusetts. The Corcoran Gallery of Art closed in 2014, sending its more than 19,000 artworks to the National Gallery of Art and 21 other art institutions in Washington, D.C., and the Newseum paid $372.5 million for its building The collection was sold to Johns Hopkins University and will remain in the hands of the museum’s founder and major funder, the Free Forum, which plans to organize the traveling exhibition.
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As part of the museum’s closure, the executive director and board members will need to determine who owns the collection. In a for-profit organization, the founder may be the owner and may handle the project as he or she chooses. In a nonprofit museum, objects are more likely to belong to the institution itself. This can be complicated, for example, if the donated item enters a museum collection with restrictions (such as the item must be permanently displayed or never sold). Restricted items are not considered outright owned by the museum, and museum officials will need to contact the donor (if still alive) or go to court (if the donor is deceased) to have those restrictions lifted before the item can proceed with the transfer to another institution.
Susana Smith Bautista became director of the Pasadena Art Museum in 2017 and began closing the museum permanently the following year — and her experience led her to write her 2021 book How to Close a Museum: A Practical Guide, Published by Rowman and Littlefield – told the Observer she was “busy looking for documents” showing how and when the works came into the museum’s collection. “For artworks for which we can’t find any documentation, or where the documentation doesn’t require us to return it to the artist/donor, we try to consider which museums would most benefit from these pieces, so we provide them.”
Opportunities for private buyers to acquire items from closed or shuttered museum collections may be limited, especially if the institution is in debt and needs to sell items to repay the debt. “If a museum owes money and wishes to sell some or all of its collection, a buyer can call the executive director and inquire about purchasing one or more items,” said Jason DeJong, a bankruptcy attorney in the Chicago office of Brian Cave LLP. Jason DeJonker explained. However, he added that museum directors are more likely to hire an outside broker, such as a dealer or auction house, to sell the item rather than selling it to a private individual at once. Individuals may still be able to acquire sought-after works, but in a highly competitive auction arena.
After a museum closes, it’s not always easy to find new homes for everything in the collection. For example, the Peoria Historical Society in Arizona disbanded in 2019 after years of internal disputes over how to govern the organization. The board of directors split and the two entities each sued the other for “ownership.” After several years of mediation and court appearances, Maricopa County Superior Court ordered the organization disbanded and the collection turned over to the city of Peoria. The city places the Historical Society’s collection at the Arizona Science Center primarily because the center is local and has the storage space to house the numerous items. “We all want the science center to move its collection to other museums,” Janice Klein, executive director of the Arizona Museum Association, told the Observer.
But not all museums that close cease operations permanently. The National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia took out a loan to build a new building when the Great Recession hit in 2008 and found itself saddled with $30 million in unpayable debt and declared bankruptcy in 2020. Dr. Misha Galperin, president of Philanthropic Advisors, which works with Jewish nonprofits and served as a consultant in 2019, came up with the idea of making the museum part of the Smithsonian Institution. “They have museums for African Americans, Native Americans and Latinos. I think we fall into that category,” he told the Observer. However, some current and former museum trustees have chipped in to pay off the debt, and luxury shoe designer Stuart Weitzman donated $30 million last December to create a museum in his name for what is now the Weitzman American National Museum. The museum establishes an endowment fund.
