What Happens When a Museum Closes?

Richard P. Townsend was in Italy when he got the call. The director of New York’s Museum of Biblical Art, he was in the midst of preparing for an exhibition of Donatello’s sculpture that would go on to be the museum’s most well-attended and critically acclaimed.

It would also be its last. The caller, a member of the museum’s board, broke the news that the American Bible Society would soon be selling its Upper West Side building. The Museum of Biblical Art (MOBIA for short) had just 12 months to find another affordable home—a timeline that, in the end, proved too short. In June 2015, the institution closed its doors for good.

Read the whole story here.