NEW YORK, NY.- The museum has built a reputation for celebrating Black artists and working-class communities over the past decade, but now it is putting this work on pause. The Underground Museum in Los Angeles unexpectedly announced last week that it was closing until further notice.

Nearly 10 years after the beloved cultural organization began, developing into one of the country’s leading venues for Black art, its two directors have departed, and the doors of its Arlington Heights location have shuttered. The decision was announced Tuesday by one of the museum’s founders, sculptor Karon Davis, who posted her message on Instagram. “We simply do not have any answers right now,” she wrote in her letter, which was then published on the museum’s website. In 2012, Davis started the museum alongside her husband, painter Noah Davis.

It was unclear from Karon Davis’ message when the Underground Museum might reopen or how the sudden closure would affect staff and trustees. Davis declined to comment through her dealer, Wilding Cran Gallery in Los Angeles.

The museum had recently returned from its two-year pandemic hiatus, an uncertain period when the organization hired Meg Onli from the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia to become its curator and one of its two directors, alongside executive Cristina Pacheco.

“The way Noah was making shows was in line with mine, shows that were big and bold and not constrained,” Onli said in an interview last year with The New York Times. “What Noah was doing was really taking a Black lens, not only on Black art but on all kinds of different art.”

Onli and Pacheco did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Noah Davis died in 2015 of a rare cancer at age 32, and the Underground Museum became a vehicle for his legacy. Curators there have been working through a list of 18 curatorial proposals that Davis drafted before his death, in addition to mounting their own exhibitions of heavyweights like Lorna Simpson, William Kentridge and Deana Lawson.

Even as the museum’s reputation outgrew its size and modest budget, staff members remained devoted to serving their working-class neighborhood with community events, poetry readings, yoga classes and movie screenings. Some nearby businesses attributed a surge in local tourism and restaurant sales to the museum’s popularity.

But the attention may have been more than the Underground Museum’s guardians could handle.

“As soon as Noah passed, each of us immediately jumped into the work of running the museum to realize his vision,” Karon Davis said in her message. “As a result, we were not able to fully grieve his loss privately or take the time needed to heal.”

Davis indicated in her Instagram post that it was difficult letting someone else steer the museum, especially after her husband’s paintings went back on view at Underground this year. She said it was “evident in how hard it has been for our family to let go enough to allow Meg and Cristina to do their jobs. They have been extraordinary, and we are so grateful for the work they did with us.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.