It overcame the pandemic and the city’s red tape but the Museum of Museums will not survive another rainy season in Seattle.

First Hill’s MoM announced it will close on September 1st.

“From the very beginning, when we set out to restore and re-imagine this mid-century medical building as an art center, we knew that our operations would be tied to the building’s capacity to house us,” founder Greg Lundgren said in a letter announcing the closure Thursday. “Over the past 4 years, it has become increasingly apparent that maintaining a 77-year-old building comes with significant challenges.”

According to Lundgren, the old building on Boylston just above Broadway needs expensive repairs.

“Late last winter our plumbing issues came to a head with unfortunate closures of our first floor while our team dealt with days of pumping and hauling gallons and buckets of water out of the building,” Lundgren writes. “After significant investments from both the museum and our partnership with Swedish Hospital, the plumbing issues have only worsened, demanding an investment that neither MoM nor Swedish can undertake.”

No amount of creativity can help when roof drains are connected to the main sewer line and that main line has also collapsed. With the inevitable return of Seattle weather, MoM is shutting down.

“It feels like a ship with a hole in the bow; the deluge of Seattle rain will inevitably sink our ship,” Lundgren writes.

MoM opened on First Hill in spring of 2021 after pandemic and city permitting delays as Lundgren built on his mission to create a better Seattle by increasing the artist population and creating spaces for exhibition.

Its closure after this summer will draw this part of the mission to an end. Lundgren, meanwhile, is busy these final weeks of summer planning the city’s Bumbershoot festival. CHS reported here on the decade-long contract awarded to the New Rising Sun production company, a Lundgren partnership with Steven Severin of Neumos and Life on Mars.

Meanwhile, another of Lundgren’s First Hill venues is also having a rough time. Vito’s remains closed indefinitely after a damaging fire last summer in the E Madison building it calls home. Earlier this year, Lundgren told CHS the building’s owner was still in negotiations with the insurance company and “they remain uncertain if the building will be torn down or rebuilt.”

“We can only wait and see what that final verdict is,” Lundgren said.

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