Despite the hopes of organizations like Cornish College of the Arts, which offered to help keep Barry McGee’s 20-by-80-foot blazing red graffiti mural, Hoss, in Seattle, the mural is headed back to San Francisco, where McGee lives, this week. (I first wrote about Hoss’s predicament here.)

“It really is too bad,” said Eric Prager, the board president of Consolidated Works. With no staff and, by Friday, no home, the multidisciplinary nonprofit arts organization is nothing more than a question mark. Earlier this year trustees decided to vacate the South Lake Union warehouse at 500 Boren Avenue North after nearly four years there, citing expensive needed seismic repairs to the space and the lack of a long-term lease.

The mural was ConWorks’s only remaining asset, really, and the only significant work of art it was holding. McGee painted it in 1999 at Rice University, then left it with ConWorks shortly thereafter, in an ownership agreement laid out in a letter between the artist and then-directors Matthew Richter and Meg Shiffler.

The letter has not been found, but ConWorks is returning the piece anyway. The artist may have been amenable to the piece staying in Seattle if it hadn’t sustained damage when ConWorks moved from Terry Avenue in 2001, Prager said: “Barry looked at photos of the piece and did not think it properly represented his work.” (Prager said the piece was damaged when painted parts were pressed against each other during that transition.)

This week, Hoss will be divided into its painted parts, boxed up, and put on a southbound plane, at the expense of the artist or one of his galleries.