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Dear friends,
This is the second Curator Notes newsletter! Welcome to those who have signed up in the last two weeks, and thank you for sticking around to the OGs. This fortnight weâre talking about Coronavirus and the impact itâs had (so far) on the museum sector. In the next newsletter weâll be talking about museums and their response to the Black Lives Matter movement. As always, please feel free to send your feedback or comments, Iâd love to hear from you at curatornotes@com.
The Pandemic and Museums
In preparation to write this newsletter Iâve been reading various articles about the effect the pandemic has been having on museums. Whatâs been fascinating has been the change from the articles written at the beginning to mid 2020, to the ones written at the end of the year and into 2021. According to New Scientist, the International Council of Museums had estimated that 13 percent of museums would need to be permanently closed due to the pressures of the pandemic in May 2020, but in November it was reported âonlyâ 6.1 percent globally would close. However even if museums donât have to shut their doors, there have been widespread layoffs throughout the sector. L.A. MoCA laid off itâs entire part-time staff. In February 2021 the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York laid off another fifteen staff. This was on top of the seventy-six who were laid off at the beginning of the pandemic in April 2020. They cite visitation numbers as the main reason, with ticket sales plummeting 80 per cent and losses at the $23 million dollar mark. The American Association of Museums released a study in November last year saying that nearly 30 percent of museums surveyed reported a significant chance they would close within the year, or were still unsure if they would ever reopen. As well as facing staff cuts, some museums have had severe disruptions in their exhibition schedule due to international museums becoming reluctant to send their pieces when they had no guarantee when they would be able to come back. Curators needed to look to their own collections and think about new ways to display what they already have. A lot of museums have taken the opportunity and begun offering virtual tours - with some better than others - Parisâ Museum Jacquemart-AndrĂ© offered a 360 degree virtual tour of the 60 watercolours and 10 oil paintings by William Turner that it had on loan from Londonâs Tate Britain. While these changes are all going on behind the scenes, what differences will visitors notice? At the start of the pandemic in March 2021, theories flew around about what a normal visit would look like. Would museums make their patrons do temperature checks on entry, or would sanitisation stations be enough? In Australia (which currently has zero cases of community transition and has maintained low Covid numbers for several months now) museums are almost back to normal. For the average visitor it would seem like a return to pre-Covid days, aside from the mandatory state government app check-in (which is necessary at any restaurant, bar, hotel or long stay destination) before entering. After that, visitors are free to roam the galleries while making sure to maintain social distancing. In no museum I went to or heard of was there a need for temperature checks. Some did implement plexi-glass barriers at the visitor desk, and eliminated any cash payments. When the states first came out of lockdowns, timed entry ticketing was enforced for any visit to the gallery, but has since been relaxed in line with government guidelines since the cases across the country are low. For the âblockbusterâ exhibitions, timed entry tickets were necessary even before Coronavirus, so this is still continuing to keep restricted numbers so that guests can all see the artwork in a comfortable environment and without any risks of damaging the work on display. Face masks were also mandatory until the government deemed it unnecessary after a few months, but are still recommended. Only events held regularly by the museum have been kept on hold. This includes on site lecture series or art workshops. Some have been moved online and can be bought for a price, while others have been postponed or cancelled altogether. These are sure to start up again with regularity within the year. Not all countries have been as lucky as Australia, but it is a good indication that most will go back to normal after the infection rates drop. Currently in Florence, Italy at the Duomo Cathedral, visitors are required to wear a device around their neck that buzzes if they come into a 2 metre vicinity of another visitor. However, not all museums will need to be that strict. The International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art (CIMAM), a network of modern and contemporary art museum experts throughout the world have written this list of recommendations for museums to follow as best practices through this time. It does encourage temperature checks for all visitors and staff, as well as the wearing of masks, using floor markers to guide visitors and help them maintain distance and suspending programs and events targeted to elderly patrons. There is opportunity in the pandemic. Creating new digital content has been an afterthought for many museums and quite often it is a carbon copy of what can be seen physically inside the museum with very little choices for the viewer. Now museums are aware that this should not be the case, and instead need to design digital offerings which have been created for that purpose only. It will also allow more people to discover the museum, perhaps empower them to feel more comfortable to visit the museum once the pandemic is over. In a survey published by the Network of European Museum Organisations (NEMO) reports that more than 60% of the museums have increased their online presence since they were closed due to social distancing measures, but only 13.4% have increased their budget for online activities. It has been hard during the writing of this to separate the impact the Black Lives Matter movement also made to the museum sector during this same period of time. I will be focusing on that in my next newsletter.
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