The National Museum of Fine Arts in South Street will be closing its doors for one last time on October 2 after 42 years.

It will eventually be replaced by MUZA, the new national community art museum, which shall open at the Auberge d'Italie in 2018 when Valletta will be declared European Capital of Culture.

Heritage Malta said this morning that works on the new museum and the collection to go on display there are continuing according to plan.

Meanwhile, one of the masterpieces in the collection shall be travelling to New York and Paris to prominently feature in a major retrospective exhibition entitled Valentin de Boulogne: Beyond Caravaggio.

‘Judith and Holofernes’ by the French 17 century artist Valentin de Boulogne (1591-1632), shall be on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York between October 7 and January 16.

It shall then travel to the Louvre, Paris, where it shall go on display between February 20 and May 22 to also coincide with the Maltese Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

This, Heritage Malta said, was an exceptional loan from the museum collection which was, incidentally, also loaned to the previous and last international exhibition about the French followers of Caravaggio, including Valentin de Boulogne, held at the French Academy, Rome and the Grand Palais, Paris in 1973.