The building has since stood empty, its fate unknown, and more than 2,000 works are no longer on view at the museum, more formally known as the Karakalpakstan State Museum of Art.
"Obama may rely on his unilateral authority to join a world climate pact, but without Congress his most important promises will be empty ones whose fate will be left to his successor," they wrote.
From the perspective of retail, that is a better fate than empty storefronts.
Many homes have been demolished to make way for flood barriers; others are empty, awaiting the same fate.
And some, like St. John's, sit empty and await their fate, as each blast of winter, each soaking rain, brings them ever nearer to the afterlife.
In one, from 1990, the discs have been replaced by silver and brass mousetraps, an example of tradition reduced to sensational yet empty skill, a frequent fate among the most recent works here.
It's a compelling opening scene, the endless lines, the empty faces, so many fates hanging in the balance, and opportunists like Bruno moving through the sea of humanity like sharks.
Just as the riotous frieze of their BBC TV studios in Cardiff Bay faces a bleak prospect of empty plots, it seems the fate of their biggest projects was to stand in empty isolation, shouting jokes out into the void.
Only the Roman Catholic Church, he said, is authorized to speak about the fate of its empty churches.
Some people are still finding ways to fulfill a deep need, nurtured over years of sorting and bundling, to help their discarded empties meet a more exalted fate.
