The Rubin Museum of Art, a renowned institution dedicated to showcasing Himalayan art, will permanently close its New York location this fall after 20 years of operation. However, the museum will not cease to exist entirely. Instead, it will transform into a spaceless institution that will continue to provide long-term loans of its collection and facilitate academic research in the field of Himalayan art.
The museum's final day at its Chelsea location will be October 6, marking the end of an era for the specialized cultural institution. Along with continuing its lending and research programs, the museum will maintain its prize for Himalayan art and continue awarding grants for projects focused on this artistic field. However, the closure will result in significant staff reductions, with approximately 40 percent of employees being laid off, particularly affecting front-of-house workers.
Jorrit Britschgi, who has served as the museum's director since 2017, explained that this transition represents an attempt to transform the Rubin into a global organization. "It's leveraging the collection, leveraging our knowledge, leveraging our financial resources, and really thinking about what we've always been thinking about, which is: How is it that a museum in the 21st century still looks very much like a museum of the 20th century?" Britschgi stated. "How can we redefine how we operate as an organization?"
While the museum, like virtually every cultural institution in the United States, faced significant challenges during the pandemic, including declining foot traffic and financial shortfalls following a prolonged closure in 2020, Britschgi emphasized that the decision to close the physical space was not a direct response to pandemic-related difficulties.
The Rubin Museum was established in 2004 to house the extensive collection of Donald and Shelley Rubin, who had spent decades accumulating a diverse range of Himalayan art including scroll paintings, thangkas, Buddha sculptures, and various other artifacts. Beyond its permanent collection displays, the museum also featured contemporary art exhibitions that complemented its traditional holdings.
One of the museum's most celebrated attractions was its Tibetan Buddhist shrine room, carefully designed to recreate the authentic experience of being in a religious space through the strategic placement of scroll paintings, Buddha statues, textiles, musical instruments, and other sacred objects. While this shrine room will close along with the rest of the museum in October, museum representatives are actively searching for a new permanent location for it within New York.
Housed in a former Barneys department store, the museum received critical acclaim when it opened for distinguishing itself in New York's crowded cultural landscape. Holland Cotter, writing in his 2004 New York Times review, praised the institution for adhering to "the modern Western ideal of exhibiting art in an uncluttered, atmospherically lighted, ideology-free zone."
Like many institutions that house ancient artifacts, the Rubin has been compelled to address repatriation requests for portions of its collection in recent years. In 2022, the museum voluntarily returned a 14th-century carving and a 17th-century torana—a gateway associated with Buddhist and Hindu architecture—to Nepal. The following year, the museum also repatriated a Bhairava mask. Researchers had provided evidence that these objects had been stolen from sites in Nepal by smugglers.
At the time of the 2022 repatriation, the Rubin announced it was conducting a comprehensive review of its entire collection. Despite these efforts, some activists continue to assert that the museum holds stolen artifacts. Britschgi firmly stated that the New York museum's closure was completely unrelated to repatriation issues.
The repatriation processes led the Rubin's leadership to support a museum project in Nepal last August. Britschgi engaged in discussions with the board to provide financial backing for a project in Kathmandu that helped local communities establish the Itumbaha Museum, an exhibition space located within a Buddhist monastery dating back to the 11th century. However, the museum's involvement in this project drew criticism from local repatriation advocates in Nepal, who viewed it as an attempt to deflect attention from other restitution claims related to the systematic looting of religious sites during the 1970s and 1980s.
Britschgi assured that the Rubin will continue to prioritize provenance research efforts and that the procedures for handling repatriations will remain unchanged as the museum transitions to its new operational model. To reinforce this commitment, the museum recently hired Linda Colet as head of collections and provenance research. In its transformed state, the Rubin Museum will maintain its mission by continuing to circulate its collection through long-term loans to other institutions and facilitating scholarly study of these important works.
