The Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester announced on Friday, March 8 that it will close its museum on Dec. 31, 2013 and transfer its collection of arms and armor to the Worcester Art Museum.
Higgins Armory.
WORCESTER -- The Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester announced on Friday, March 8 that it will close its museum on Dec. 31, 2013 and transfer its collection of arms and armor to the Worcester Art Museum.
The collection will begin its move in January 2014. It will take approximately four months to move it from Higgins to its temporary home in the Hiatt Gallery - its permanent space will be where the library is inside the Art Museum.
"We will have an exhibit by the spring of 2014," says Suzanna Maas, Higgins' interim executive director. "So within the first several months of us having to close this building we will transfer the collection and re-open there in four months. In the museum world that is extraordinary.
"The norm would be, 'We can take your collection. We can raise the money. We'll think abut how we will build a separate place for it, and it'll open in 10 years.' I don't think people realize that. So opening in four months is incredible."
Higgins didn't have a large enough endowment to stay afloat. Maas and the board decided the only way to ensure the collection stayed intact in the future would be to latch onto another institution and build a partnership.
"It was together that we looked at it and that we said, 'Yup, here is the financial position, there is not enough endowment remaining to turn around the museum.' And that would typically take five years and we felt we had a three year runway," says Maas. "Therefore, we wanted to restructure with another institution. That's something you do. You look at other partners, can you build capacity in another way? That's what we meant by restructuring with another institution. That was in 2010."
Maas and the trustees laid out four goals for the collection while they searched for a long-term home for it. The highest priority was that the collection remain intact and stewarded wherever it went. Second, the collection needed to stay in Worcester. The trustees also wanted the institution that took on the collection to continue the Higgins' programming and keep the "Higgins DNA." Finally, the partnership need to be transformational. Whoever Higgins partnered with needed to be sustainable, but the relationship needed to be something new and positive for both parties involved.
Maas believes the Worcester Art Museum meets all the requirements, including the fourth one, which she called a "stretch."
The collection of armor and arms was assembled by Industrialist John Woodman Higgins in the 1920s and 1930s. It will remain at the historic building at 100 Barber Ave. in Worcester until closing on Dec. 31.
The glass-and-steel building is listed on the National Register of Historical Places. According to Maas, the future of the building is still being explored.
The museum has a full schedule of student and family-friendly activities through Dec. 31. Popular annual events such as Women in Armor month, Siege the Day Trebuchet Contest, Star Wars Day, Free Fun Friday, Haunted Higgins, Gingerbread Castle Competition and The Festival of Ale will be held in the fall, and more programming will be added to celebrate the last days of the arms and armor at their museum of origin.