so long and farewell: impermanence and the rubin museum

Éliane Radigue, Laetitia Sonami, and Bob Bielecki’s “Le Corps Sonore (Sound Body)” winds its way sonically up the Rubin’s spiral staircase (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

In the January 16, 2022, article “An Unbroken Sequence” in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, the Dalai Lama and Ven. Thubten Chodron wrote, “The Buddha describes subtle impermanence as ‘arising and passing away’ or as ‘origination and disintegration.’” They continue, “The understanding of subtle impermanence frees us from the illusion of the body being permanent.”

It’s hard to believe and difficult to accept that the Rubin Museum, which was founded by Shelly and Donald Rubin and has dedicated itself to Himalayan art and culture since it opened on October 2, 2004, will be closing its doors forever on October 6, 2024 and selling the building that was once home to Barneys on Seventeenth St. and Sixth Ave.

In an open letter to members and the community, director Jorrit Britschgi explained, “After an in-depth analysis of the cultural sector and our important place in it, we have decided to fully embrace and pursue the model of being a global museum, serving the public locally, nationally, and internationally. In light of this new direction, we will close our New York City building this fall, and become a museum without walls. . . . What will NOT change is our mission: to broadly share Himalayan art, its cultural context, and the insights it provides for humanity.”

My wife and I have been regular visitors to the Rubin since the very beginning. We’ve walked up and down Andrée Putman’s spiral steel and marble staircase countless times to experience such wonderful exhibitions as “Vanished Kingdoms: The Wulsin Photographs of Tibet, China, and Mongolia, 1921–1925,” “Written on the Wind: The Flag Project,” “The World Is Sound,” “Bon: The Magic Word,” “Francesco Clemente: Inspired by India,” and “The Red Book of C. G. Jung.” We softly beat gongs in the interactive Mandala Lab and added our voices to a collective OM recording.

We’ve attended numerous unique events there over the years, many curated by master programmer Tim McHenry: We saw Joel Grey introduce Cabaret as part of the wide-ranging Cabaret Cinema series; twice spent the night sleeping under a specially selected artwork in “The Dream-Over”; watched comedian Lewis Black discuss anger management with Johns Hopkins neurologist Dr. Barry Gordon in the innovative Brainwave festival; went to book launches by Kyabgön Phakchok Rinpoche, Ethan Nichtern, and others; meditated with Sharon Salzberg and Kimberly Brown; bought jewelry and other unique objects in the cool shop; and enjoyed an acoustic performance by Graham Parker in the “Naked Soul” series, in which the British singer-songwriter and author incorporated slides from the museum’s collection and talked about how, when he lived across the street while Barneys was being built, he and his friends would get loaded and laugh at the passersby getting jumped by huge rats.

The Rubin is saying goodbye with its long-running changing exhibitions “Masterworks: A Journey Through Himalayan Art” and “Gateway to Himalayan Art” as well as “Mandala Lab: Where emotions can turn to wisdom” and “The Tibetan Buddhist Shrine Room,” which will move to the Brooklyn Museum’s Arts of Asia galleries in June 2025.

In addition, as a way of honoring the past while looking toward the future, “Reimagine: Himalayan Art Now” features interventions by more than thirty artists, commenting on pieces from the Rubin’s holdings. It’s an exciting show that includes Chitra Ganesh’s digital animation Silhouette in the Graveyard from The Scorpion Gesture behind a Mongolian gilt copper alloy sculpture of Maitreya, Buddha of the Future; Shushank Shrestha’s playful ceramic Uber Rat in front of an eleventh-century Indian sandstone statue of Ganesha; Jupiter Pradhan’s miniature installation The Protectors, riffing on a Central Tibet statue of Mahakala, the protector deity; Asha Kama Wangdi’s (VAST Bhutan) The Windhorse (lungta), prayer flags and five horses, representing the five states of mind and the five elements, that rise up the center of the staircase, in conversation with a Himalayan woodblock; and Tserin Sherpa’s dazzling and potent Muted Expressions, a response to the 2015 earthquakes in Nepal, with a cluster of disembodied, bejeweled metal hands and feet hanging like a rotisserie over an oval mirror, relating to a stunning five-hundred-year-old gilt copper alloy statue from Central Tibet of Pratisara, one of the five protector goddesses, one of my favorites.

For its last days, the Rubin is hosting a 17th Street Farewell Weekend, with free admission to the museum October 3–6 (with advance RSVP), a party on Friday night with cocktails and DJ Rekha, and a ceremony concluding the museum’s Flag Project on Sunday at 5:00.

The annual Rubin Museum block party was always a highlight of the summer (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

In 2012, McHenry curated the fabulous series “Happy Talk,” consisting of fascinating conversations between such entertainers as Elaine Stritch, Laurie Anderson, Michael C. Hall, and Julianne Moore and scientists, doctors, and professors; an evening of love songs with three couples, Roseanne Cash and John Leventhal, Steve Earle and Allison Moorer, and Larry Campbell and Teresa Williams; and the film series “Happiness is . . . ,” screening such works as Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces, Federico Fellini’s 8½, Ingmar Bergman’s Cries and Whispers, and Woody Allen’s Annie Hall.

My wife and I will miss the physical Rubin deeply; for twenty years, it always knew what we needed, even when we didn't, providing comfort and stimulation in endless ways, serving as a kind of happy place, a respite from the maelstrom going on outside its hallowed walls.

On December 31, 2010, the Dalai Lama posted on Twitter, “Awareness of impermanence and appreciation of our human potential will give us a sense of urgency that we must use every precious moment.”

That philosophy is exactly what the Rubin has been about for two decades, offering myriad precious moments; I’m terribly unhappy to see it go.

[You can follow Mark Rifkin and This Week in New York every day here.]