Contrary to what you may have read lately, the Museum of Modern Art is intent on carefully preserving the former American Folk Art Museum next door.

At least, the part of it that is most recognizable to the public: an 82-foot-high sculptural ensemble of 63 panels, cast in a gorgeous copper-bronze alloy, each panel different from those around it. Some look like lunar landscapes, others like lava flows. They are arrayed in three planes that fold into one another as a palm would crease when closing.

Together, the panels compose the principal facade of the folk art building at 45 West 53rd Street. From 2001 to 2011, they were the face of the institution. And, since the financially troubled museum withdrew from Midtown to a smaller space near Lincoln Center, the somber facade has served as a memorial to itself, one of the first significant works of 21st-century architecture in New York, by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects.

It’s probably safe to say that no one associated with the folk art museum is interested in the facade being turned into an elaborate appliqué.

“It would be a kinder fate for the museum facade to be at Storm King, as the front of an imaginary building in an enclosure of fresh air, than to be buried in storage for the foreseeable future,” said Darcy Miro, the artist who collaborated on the facade with Mr. Williams and Ms. Tsien. The Storm King Art Center is in the Hudson Valley. The panels were cast at the Tallix fine-arts foundry in Beacon, N.Y.

“It would be a mistake to just use it as adornment,” Ms. Miro said. “Maybe, as metal, it was always meant to go back to the land and leave the city.”

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