First the bad news: Rhode Island’s top ethnographic museum, Bristol’s Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, is closing its doors as of Aug. 31. The reason: an out-of-date building that the museum’s owner, Brown University, has decided is too expensive to repair. Now the good news: the museum, which boasts a collection of more than 100,000 objects ranging from Navajo pottery to West African masks to Hmong story cloths, isn’t going to disappear. Instead, Brown plans to construct a new museum closer to its East Side campus — a process that’s expected to take several years.

In the meantime, Rhode Islanders still have a week to sample the Haffenreffer’s riches, which include a display of Plains Indian beaded moccasins, feather-studded clothing from the Cashinahua people of Peru and a striking collection of Guatemalan ceremonial masks.

The Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology is located at 300 Tower St. (off Route 136) in Bristol. Hours are Tues.-Sun. 11-5. For more information, call (401) 863-2031. (Note: Brown also operates a smaller Haffenreffer gallery on its Providence campus. That gallery, located in Manning Hall on the Brown University Green, is not affected by the museum’s closing.)

— Bill Van Siclen