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In a Landslide Decision, Workers at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston Have Become the Latest Major US Museum Staff to Unionize

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In a Landslide Decision, Workers at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston Have Become the Latest Major US Museum Staff to Unionize

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Museums employees across the country have been unionizing in the past several years

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In a vote of 133 to 14, the staff at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), has voted to form a union. Employees from more than 30 departments, including curatorial, conservation, development, visitor and member services, and IT, participated in the vote.

MFA employees will join the United Auto Workers' union (UAW), which also hosts staffers at the Museum of Modern Art and New Museum in New York, as well as the ACLU. UAW also represents other groups in the Boston area, including Harvard graduate students and attorneys with Greater Boston Legal Services.

Museum staff will now move toward bargaining with the MFA on a contract.

"There's a great swell of interest in unionization among museum workers," Maida Rosenstein, president of UAW Local 2110, to which MFA employees now belong, said in a phone interview. "It's very inspiring. I've been in our union for 30 years. We've always represented employees at Museum of Modern Art, but to see what has grown, from being one of the few museum unions to so many more, is really fantastic."

In an announcement, the union said it was fighting for "diversity, opportunities for advancement and fair compensation, job and benefits security, and support of staff with care responsibilities."

"We cannot call ourselves a world-class museum until all of our employees are treated with fairness, dignity, and respect," Kat Bossi, a staffer in the exhibitions department, added in the announcement.

The movement for the union has been ongoing since summer 2019, and ballots were tallied under the watch of 20 observers during a public Zoom call on Friday.

"This election was important for our staff and for the MFA as an institution," MFA director Matthew Teitelbaum said in a statement. "We have said throughout this process that above all, we support our employees' right to make this decision and we want to ensure all voices are heard. We are pleased that the election played out smoothly and fairly, and we are committed to working with the union moving forward."

In just the past two years, art museums nationwide, from the Guggenheim in New York to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, have had staff unionization efforts.

Employees, such as those at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA), have looked to organizations such as the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees for support. At the PMA, employees called for COVID-19 safety measures, as well as protection from harassment.

Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward.

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In a Landslide Decision, Workers at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston Become the Latest Major American Museum Staff to Unionize

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In a vote of 133 to 14, the staff at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), has voted to form a union. Employees from more than 30 departments, including curatorial, conservation, development, visitor and member services, and IT, participated in the vote.

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DIGITALDigital Hangar Pensare e fare cultura in un mondo digitale

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DIGITALDigital Hangar Pensare e fare cultura in un mondo digitale

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La tecnologia può semplificare il modo in cui le organizzazioni culturali lavorano, migliorare la capacità di conoscenza del proprio pubblico, stimolare la produzione di nuovi format e costruire una nuova narrazione del proprio progetto.

Digital Hangar ti aiuta a rispondere a questa sfida stimolante senza averne paura con VISIONI per aprire nuove prospettive e STRUMENTIda mettere in pratica.

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Come ricreare un'esperienza artistica sul digitale? Musei, teatri, compagnie, festival: come possono ripensare processi produttivi, contenuti culturali e format grazie alla tecnologia?

Ne parliamo con esperti, innovatori e guru in uno spazio dedicato alla riflessione e al confronto su come sarà il futuro digitale delle organizzazioni culturali.

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Digital Pensare e fare cultura in un mondo digitale Scopri il progetto Registrati al prossimo webinar Online i nuovi corsi della library Registrati al prossimo webinar Online i nuovi corsi della library Strumenti Video, tutorial e approfondimenti per trasformare la tua relazione con il digitale Scopri di più Di cosa hai bisogno?

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Six Major Budapest Museums Collaborate To Give Schools Virtual Access To Hungary's Cultural Heritage

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Six Major Budapest Museums Collaborate To Give Schools Virtual Access To Hungary's Cultural Heritage

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The Petofi Literary Museum in Budapest used ThingLink to create an interactive schools museum tour, which quickly expanded into a collaborative virtual schools visit to the six major national collections in Budapest.

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Six Major Budapest Museums Collaborate To Give Schools Virtual Access To Hungary's Cultural Heritage

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Six major Budapest museums collaborate to give schools virtual access to Hungary's cultural heritage.  

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Rediscovering Art with Augmented Reality Technology

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Rediscovering Art with Augmented Reality Technology

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What will the art museum of the future look like, and will technology hinder creativity? Dr. Bob Sumner from ETH Zurich has the answers. In this interview, he talks about how the Princely Collections, the private bank LGT and ETH Zurich have created an app that unites art and technology and rejuvenates 400-year-old works of art with the help of Augmented Reality.

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What will the art museum of the future look like, and will technology hinder creativity? Dr. Bob Sumner from ETH Zurich has the answers. In this interview, he talks about how the Princely Collections, the private bank LGT and ETH Zurich have created an app that unites art and technology and rejuvenates 400-year-old works of art with the help of Augmented Reality.

AR is experienced when we take digital content - or any kind of visual data such as graphics and animations - and insert that content into the real world. In other words, we merge the digital world with the world around us. This can be accomplished in several ways. One is to add digital content directly to the camera on a smartphone - which, when you look at the screen, can make it appear as if a figure is standing in front of you, for example.

Do you always need a screen to experience AR?

Not necessarily - at least not in the traditional sense of a screen. One option I find very exciting is the use of see-through devices such as glasses, which I believe are the future of AR. They enable you to see the digital content in a way that blends very naturally into the world around you, without looking at a screen. It won't be long before this becomes a ubiquitous part of our lives.
You use AR to promote art. How did the project with the Princely Collections come into being?
I lead the ETH Game Technology Centre, where we explore the role of game technology in science and education. One of our core areas of research is AR. I gave a talk at TEDxZurich in 2016 about our work in this area. One of the examples I showed on stage featured a painting. Christof Buri, who heads Group Marketing at LGT, was in the audience and contacted me afterwards. He asked if we could take this a step further and develop something for the Princely Collections, which belong to the Princely Family of Liechtenstein - the owners of LGT. They have been passionate art collectors for over 400 years.
You used AR to enhance pieces from the Princely Collections?
Yes, exactly. You can now see, for example, how Rubens' daughter ages over the years, how a painting was restored and painted over, or if a painting contains a bird, you can see it fly. You can find the MAG/NET app for this on the Apple Store and Google Play.

Will AR apps be art museums' 'audio guides' of the future?

Not only can AR replace audio guides, it can do much more to enhance the experience. With an audio guide, you listen to stories about paintings, but the experience is very isolating. There's no interaction. With AR, you can tell stories about the artwork and its background, as well as add visual content and animations, highlight information about different aspects of paintings, show step-by-step how it was painted, collected or restored. AR makes it possible for the viewer to have an interactive dialogue with the painting.

How will art museums change if AR becomes part of the way we experience art?

My hope is that art museums will become more popular and more engaging. For example, AR makes it possible for anybody to enhance art with AR. Just like you can upload a video with YouTube, anyone can add content to a painting that represents their own interpretation of the piece. I think AR is an opportunity not only for museum curators, but also for visitors to personally interpret art.

What is your response to critics who say that AR prevents us from looking at art directly and independently?

One of the projects that we worked on is called "Augmented Creativity". We've also published a scientific paper about it. We proved that AR doesn't have to compete with the real world. Instead, you can use AR and the power and popularity of smartphones to redirect attention to the real world. AR can help you focus more on what's in front of you, enhance your engagement and your understanding - and what you take home from a visit to a museum.
Do you consider your work mainly scientific and technological or are you and your team artists too?
I'd say we're half and half. My background is computer science and we have other researchers and engineers on the team, but we also have two fantastic digital artists who contribute immensely to what we do. Something like this can never be either/or. That's part of the magic and makes it so compelling.

LGT is a leading international private banking and asset management group that has been fully controlled by the Princely House of Liechtenstein for over 80 years. The company employs over 3600 people who work out of more than 20 locations in Asia, Europe and the Middle East. LGT offers tailored investment advice and strategic wealth planning for wealthy private individuals, companies, private foundations and institutional clients. As the family office of the Princely House of Liechtenstein, the bank has longstanding experience in structuring and managing sizeable assets.

www.lgt.com
www.liechtensteincollections.at
https://ethz.ch/en.html

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Rediscovering Art with Augmented Reality Technology - Arts & Collections

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What will the art museum of the future look like, and will technology hinder creativity? Dr. Bob Sumner from ETH Zurich has the answers. In this interview, he talks about how the Princely Collections, the private bank LGT and ETH Zurich have created an app that unites art and technology and rejuvenates 400-year-old works of art with the help of Augmented Reality.

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Il Covid-19 e la seconda ondata (di infodemia): diffidate di chi usa i numeri assoluti

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Il Covid-19 e la seconda ondata (di infodemia): diffidate di chi usa i numeri assoluti

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«C’è stato un risveglio. Lo hai percepito?». Il lettore ci consenta di citare il leader supremo Snoke (molto probabilmente uno dei personaggi meno riusciti dell’universo di Star Wars, quasi certamente uno dei meno approfonditi, ndr) per tornare a parlare di come vengono diffusi i dati relativi alla pandemia da nuovo coronavirus.

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"C'è stato un risveglio. Lo hai percepito?". Il lettore ci consenta di citare il leader supremo Snoke (molto probabilmente uno dei personaggi meno riusciti dell'universo di Star Wars, quasi certamente uno dei meno approfonditi, ndr) per tornare a parlare di come vengono diffusi i dati relativi alla pandemia da nuovo coronavirus.

Il risveglio non riguarda tanto l'aumento in numeri assoluti dei contagi registrati nel nostro Paese. Quanto il fatto che sta arrivando la seconda ondata dell' infodemia. E se è sano che ci sia dibattito tra gli scienziati rispetto a un virus del quale ancora resta molto da scoprire, lo è un po' meno che questo dibattito avvenga in prima serata in Tv. Ed è del tutto controproducente quando finisce in risse, fortunatamente solo verbali, a mezzo social.

I superdiffusori dell'infodemia, però, restano i giornalisti (chi scrive non è esente, ndr). E sui giornali, sineddoche entro la quale ci sia permesso di ricomprendere ogni mezzo di informazione, la seconda ondata è ben presente. Certo, il fatto che il presidente americano Donald Trump sia risultato positivo, con le conseguenze che questo può avere in termini geopolitici, non aiuta. Nel senso che contribuisce ad aumentare l'attenzione mediatica sulla pandemia.

Fortunatamente, la scienza ha elaborato un tampone che permette di riconoscere la positività a questa patologia. Un tampone del tutto gratuito e che è a disposizione di tutti: basta riconoscere il giornalista che utilizza numeri assoluti per raccontare il contagio. E diffidarne. Vale, ovviamente, anche per la redazione di Infodata.

Il problema, per mantenere la metafora in una galassia lontana lontana, è che solo un Sith vive di assoluti. Dove i Sith sono i 'cattivoni' della saga ideata da George Lucas. E appunto titolare che sabato 3 ottobre si sono registrati 2.844 positivi, oltretutto aggiungendo che non se ne vedevano così tanti da aprile, rappresenta la via per il lato oscuro dell'informazione.

E non soltanto perché, prima relativizzazione possibile, significa che si è positivizzato un italiano ogni 21.183. Che, per inciso, significa che è risultato positivo al test un abitante di Sondrio, non ce ne vogliano i valtellinesi. Ma anche perché il numero di persone positive al Sars-CoV-2 dipende dal numero di quelle che vengono sottoposte ad esame diagnostico. Via, ad un tampone.

Nello specifico, il 3 ottobre si è registrato un tampone positivo ogni 41,8 dei 118mila test effettuati. Il 21 aprile i positivi furono 2.729, grosso modo quelli di sabato scorso, mentre i tamponi effettuati poco più di 52mila. Il che porta le persone infette scoperte a una ogni 19 esami. Circostanza che conferma una volta di più quanto siano cambiate le cose in questi mesi: sia in termini di quantità di test che di tipologia delle persone che a questi ultimi vengono sottoposte. Che, più in generale, di andamento della pandemia. Tutti elementi che il numero assoluto dei nuovi positivi non permette di valutare.

Così come ha poco senso, al netto del cattivo gusto, pubblicare la classifica dei Paesi con più decessi espressi in numeri assoluti. Specie se si afferma che al terzo posto c'è l' India con 94.503 morti e al sesto l' Italia con 35.835. Peccato che, al 2018, i cittadini indiani fossero 1,353 miliardi, contro i 60,2 milioni di italiani al 1 gennaio di quest'anno. Il che significa che Nuova Delhi ha registrato 1 morto per Covid-19 ogni 14.603 abitanti, mentre Roma uno ogni 1.681.

E poi c'è il fattore tempo. Nel senso che quando si cerca di andare oltre il numero assoluto, spesso si tende a commettere l'errore di confrontare la situazione con quella del giorno precedente. E parlare quindi, a seconda dei casi, di tendenza in aumento o in diminuzione. Posto che le tendenze si valutano su periodi più lunghi, i confronti tra giorni successivi rischiano di risentire di diversi fattori di disturbo. Come il fatto che nel fine settimana si facciano meno tamponi, e quindi si trovino tendenzialmente meno casi. O che possano esserci ritardi nella comunicazione dei dati alla Protezione civile, come purtroppo è accaduto in più di un'occasione in questi mesi.

Per ovviare a questi problemi, è utile ricorrere alla media mobile, ovvero una media calcolata a partire dal dato giornaliero e da quelli di un eguale numero di giorni precedenti e successivi. Il che è esattamente quello che Infodata ha fatto per realizzare questa infografica.

Nella parte alta del grafico (che si aggiorna in automatico quotidianamente, ndr), la linea rossa della media mobile normalizza l'andamento dei contagi, annullando l'effetto delle oscillazioni quotidiane dovute alle ragioni di cui sopra. In quella bassa, invece, il confronto è tra la media mobile dei contagi, sempre rappresentata dalla linea rossa, e il numero assoluto delle persone ricoverate in terapia intensiva.

Elemento, quest'ultimo, da tenere particolarmente sotto controllo per capire la gravità della situazione. Non solo perché il numero dei ricoveri è certo, non dipende cioè da quello dei tamponi effettuati, ma anche perché all'aumento dei casi gravi rischia di seguire un incremento dei decessi. Senza contare che le misure di lockdown nascono per evitare che il contagio cresca finendo per saturare i reparti di terapia intensiva.

Ora, tornando alla questione di partenza, il problema di comunicare il numero assoluto dei contagi non pone esclusivamente un problema di cattiva informazione. Una delle conseguenze è che si rischia di insinuare nei lettori un sentimento di paura. E, questa volta tocca citare il maestro Yoda, "la paura è la via per il lato oscuro".

La conseguenza più grave, però, è che trasforma la discussione sul Sars-CoV-2 in un dibattito politico. Per cui chi sostiene il governo ingigantisce l'andamento i casi, chi si oppone minimizza. Quando il dibattito dovrebbe essere non sulla diffusione del virus, ma sulle misure che il governo adotta per contenerla e di come gestisce il Paese nel frattempo.

Prima di concludere, preveniamo un'obiezione. Relativizzare i numeri del contagio non rappresenta in alcun modo un tentativo di minimizzare i rischi. Se con il filtro posto al centro dell'infografica si selezionano la Sardegna, la Campania e il Lazio, si vede bene come l'andamento dei casi abbia superato quello della scorsa primavera. Fortunatamente, non è così per i ricoveri in terapia intensiva.

Ma proprio per evitare che salgano questi ultimi resta fondamentale continuare a seguire le norme igieniche, osservare il distanziamento sociale e indossare la mascherina, anche all'aperto in quelle regioni che lo hanno previsto. Il senso di questo pezzo, per quel che può valere, è un invito a essere razionali. E non soltanto quando si tratta di numeri relativi ai contagi. Non bisogna dimenticare che il rischio esiste, non è possibile annullarlo ma lo si può ridurre. Più corteccia prefrontale, insomma, e meno amigdala. Ancora una volta, "la paura è la via per il lato oscuro".

Qui gli episodi della "prima stagione" della cronaca critica della diffusione dei dati:
S01E01
So1Eo2
S01E03
S01E04
S01E05

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Blog | Il Covid-19 e la seconda ondata (di infodemia): diffidate di chi usa i numeri assoluti - Info Data

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"C'è stato un risveglio. Lo hai percepito?". Il lettore ci consenta di citare il leader supremo Snoke (molto probabilmente uno dei personaggi meno riusciti dell'universo di Star Wars, quasi certamente uno dei meno approfonditi, ndr) per tornare a parlare di come vengono diffusi i dati relativi alla pandemia da nuovo coronavirus.

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How the Pandemic Has Highlighted a Crisis in Contemporary Museums

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How the Pandemic Has Highlighted a Crisis in Contemporary Museums

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In researching three Indiana institutions, it is clear that the lockdown has exacerbated trends in the museum field such as a lack of relevance to the general public and increasing reliance on private philanthropy.

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What does the word "museum" make you think of? For many of us, the first thing that comes to mind may be an art museum, perhaps an encyclopedic museum, a massive institution like the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Museum of Modern Art or the British Museum or the Louvre, or maybe the American Museum of Natural History or the museums that make up the Smithsonian. But museums come in a kaleidoscope of sizes and subject matters.

Whatever their type, all have been affected deeply - like the rest of us - by COVID-19 and this year's economic lockdown. To get an idea of how this worked on a local level, in addition to my own research, I spoke with staff members of three very different area museums here in south-central Indiana: the Eskenazi Museum of Art (one of the museums at Indiana University Bloomington); WonderLab Museum of Science, Health and Technology, a science museum in Bloomington geared especially toward children (and the rare museum in Bloomington that is not part of the university); and the Atterbury-Bakalar Air Museum in Columbus.

One thing that these museums share, not surprisingly, is a sense of uncertainty. The Atterbury-Bakalar Air Museum had originally planned a "soft" reopening on July 9 (admitting the public only on Thursdays through Saturdays) but changed this to August 1, only on Saturdays, and for more limited hours. (The museum has since delayed its opening even further, as the state of Indiana has extended its reopening process.) WonderLab has a provisional reopening plan for early August, but it is not yet publicly announced, and is subject to change. (Aleisha Kropf, their marketing and communications director, told me that it is "quite possible" that the opening would be delayed.) For the Eskenazi Museum, lockdown came just months into reopening after a three-year closure for renovation. Museums are playing reopenings, and everything else, by ear.

Each of the museums I spoke to is funded differently, and the lockdown has affected the funding of each museum in very different ways. About half of WonderLab's funding comes from donations, the other half from "earned revenue." Some of their biggest revenue generators, such as summer camp, have had to be canceled. Neither the Eskenazi nor Atterbury-Bakalar charges for admission. Base funding for the Eskenazi is provided by Indiana University, and during the lockdown the university has cut that funding by 5%. Atterbury-Bakalar is funded mainly by a stipend from the Columbus Municipal Airport Board of Aviation.

Not surprisingly, employees at WonderLab have been most deeply affected by the pandemic, with part-time staff laid off and permanent staff having hours reduced; however, the museum has received a series of grants and loans, including a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan (in the range of $150k-$350k) which has covered staff salaries and allowed all full-time staff to return to normal hours. The Eskenazi Museum has not had to lay off or furlough any employees. Atterbury-Bakalar is staffed entirely by volunteers - since they are mostly retired, they are particularly cautious about returning to the museum.

Both WonderLab and the Eskenazi have been driven by the lockdown to focus more on virtual aspects of their museums. WonderLab has seen a very positive response to their virtual programs, including attention from out-of-state residents. The Eskenazi's focus on virtual aspects includes not only programs but its online collections. Both museums are considering the role of technology in their long-term plans, and how virtual offerings might become more significant after the pandemic.

More broadly, all of the museums emphasized the need for change moving forward. "Our executive director asked if anyone could think of a single thing that hasn't been rethought or redone to cope with COVID," WonderLab's Kropf told me. "Someone suggested that the doors were the same. But no, they are not. It made us all laugh. The way we do every single thing on every level has changed. Even the way we open the doors."

* * *

What does the future hold for museums more generally? The hanging question over what public life will look like in the near future can only exacerbate the discouraging trends that have been in place for some time.

Let's consider art museums: Over 50 years ago, Pierre Bourdieu and Alain Darbel demonstrated how European art museums exist at a remove from the daily lives of most people, that the "love of art" is tied closely to the upper class. In the decades since, we've seen attendance rise with the emergence of blockbuster exhibitions - and then fall again to pre-blockbuster levels after the economic downturn of 2007-08. Even with improved numbers over the past few years, in 2017 only 23.7% of American adults reported visiting an art museum or gallery in the previous year. Art museums continue to lie outside of most people's experience. Surveys consistently show that museum attendance is as highly correlated with both education and income as it was in the 1960s. Relatively few people can afford to go to museums, or at least large museums in major cities. And, not surprisingly, art museums do not seem to be relevant to the lives of a majority of people.

How much does this matter to museums? With admissions making up a small percentage of museum revenue, and government funding decreasing, many museums have increasingly relied on philanthropy. When the Met established a mandatory admission fee for out-of-state visitors in 2018, the statements of the president and CEO reflected that relative importance: Visitors were unfairly criticized for not paying their way while wealthy donors were praised as "our generous contributors." We might ask whether most of the public needs museums. We might also ask, with museum attendance making such a small part of revenue: Do they need us?

In reality, museums merely reflect the massive inequalities in society at large. After the pandemic, museums may represent an even greater concentration of wealth in fewer hands. The American Alliance of Museums has repeatedly warned that roughly a third of museums may never reopen. Almost half of those that will reopen expect to do so with reduced staff. A study of the arts and culture sector of New York City suggests that the revenue of smaller institutions has been disproportionately affected by the lockdown. Inequality is also reflected in the handling of loans for museums and other institutions. Although PPP loans were designed for small businesses, many larger organizations also received them via loopholes. Watchdog groups are also concerned about the lack of oversight for these loans, with questions about how many institutions are receiving loans but not retaining jobs as they should. Regardless, as we've seen from headlines, many museums have already had to lay off workers. And, since the PPP loans were meant to cover just two months of payroll, museums are resuming layoffs since the loans expired. Workers, especially vulnerable ones working only part-time, may bear the brunt of the crisis.

At the same time, the lockdown has inspired some curators and museums to show the possibilities of what museums can do after the pandemic. Dan Hicks, Curator of Archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, started the hashtag #MuseumsUnlocked on Twitter, which for 100 days invited anyone to share images of objects in museum collections and monuments around the world, organized around a different theme each day. The project was collaborative, with the participation of official museum accounts, museum staff, and the general public. The use of virtual spaces and cooperative spirit in this and other projects are highly promising. Hicks and a handful of other museum curators and directors have publicly embraced the potential for museums to address their racist pasts, repatriate artifacts, and work more closely with their communities after COVID-19. This is all for the good. But can these recommendations be implemented in the current crisis? The pandemic has also seen many museums make formulaic statements in favor of Black Lives Matter or "systemic change," but with no real plan to follow through on such statements. And with rising inequality, the public may have even less of a say about museums' activities and missions than before.

Ultimately, what these trends show is that, if we want museums to reflect our values more, we may need to remake not only them but our society as a whole. What are our priorities and how do we want to fund them? Do we need to rethink our idea of a museum as well? "Museum" does not have to mean an art museum, or a major institution with blockbuster exhibitions. Of course, a large variety of museums of different types and sizes already exists. Perhaps we do not need to recreate museums as much as broaden our existing conceptions of them. It's helpful to compare museums with public libraries: Libraries are spaces set up for use, not just passive watching; they lend items out to users, and provide basic services (computers, internet, printing, workshops on various topics) that communities need - all for free. The future may be in smaller museums, not just more responsive to communities but more driven by them. As the museum staff I spoke with suggested, the crisis may be an opportunity after all.

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How the Pandemic Has Highlighted a Crisis in Contemporary Museums

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What does the word "museum" make you think of? For many of us, the first thing that comes to mind may be an art museum, perhaps an encyclopedic museum, a massive institution like the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the Museum of Modern Art or the British Museum or the Louvre, or maybe the American Museum of Natural History or the museums that make up the Smithsonian.

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How a Japanese Museum Is Documenting Life During Covid-19

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How a Japanese Museum Is Documenting Life During Covid-19

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New exhibition features everyday objects that would have been unfamiliar before the pandemic

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New exhibition features everyday objects that would have been unfamiliar before the pandemic

smithsonianmag.com

Urahoro, Japan, has yet to record a confirmed case of Covid-19. But like many around the world, people in this small town have made an array of adjustments to reduce their risk of catching the novel coronavirus. Adults wear face masks in public, children have shifted to online schooling and locals take notice of visitors who could potentially introduce the disease into the community.

In February, a public museum based in the town's library asked residents to contribute objects representative of their experiences during the pandemic. Now, reports Yuri Kageyama for the Associated Press, the Historical Museum of Urahoro has opened a small exhibition highlighting a selection of the hundreds of donations received.

Items on view include a pile of takeout menus, instructions for children shifting to remote learning and guides for creating homemade masks. A pamphlet from a local shrine announces the cancellation of summer festivals, while another document outlines directions for participating in a funeral.

"Our daily lives will be part of history," curator Makoto Mochida tells . "We'd like to collect as many items as possible before they are thrown away."

According to Kyodo News, Japanese museums' efforts to collect artifacts related to the Covid-19 pandemic stem from a shortage of documentation dated to the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic. More than 450,000 people across the country succumbed to this 20th-century outbreak, notes Japan Today.

Mochida tells the Associated Press that he focused on collecting objects like pamphlets and masks. Though letters and diaries form the core of many historical archives, their contemporary digital counterparts are easily lost in cyberspace, he adds.

The masks featured in the Urahoro exhibition trace a story of evolution. At the beginning of the pandemic, Japanese officials encouraged residents to make their own facial coverings out of old shirts and other scrap material. Over time, the masks became more innovative, with some made out of sheer plastic, engineered to enable dining and drinking, or even programmed to translate different languages. Designs crafted out of bright fabric and decorated with artistic embroidery have also emerged as fashion statements.

Exhibition attendee Shoko Maede tells the Associated Press that she can picture future visitors to the museum remembering life during the pandemic.

"They may think, 'Oh, so this was the way it was,'" she says. "Things do reveal how people think."

Another exhibition that aims to record life amid the pandemic opened recently at the New-York Historical Society. Titled " Hope Wanted: New York City Under Quarantine," the outdoor gallery showcases 50 photographs and 14 audio interviews centered on life in New York City at the height of the outbreak.

Elsewhere, institutions such as Columbia University and the Chicago History Museum are collecting oral histories of people's experiences. These testimonies "add depth and context to the accounts that will inevitably end up in history books," wrote Katherine J. Wu for Smithsonian magazine in April.

Several Smithsonian museums-including the National Museum of American History and the National Museum of African American History and Culture-have launched pandemic-era collection projects. The Anacostia Community Museum, for instance, launched its Moments of Resilience online diary series in May.

Mochida, for his part, plans to open a larger exhibition in Urahoro next February.

"When we look back on this era in the future," he tells Kyodo News, "those materials will help us objectively examine it."

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How a Japanese Museum Is Documenting Life During Covid-19

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smithsonianmag.com Urahoro, Japan, has yet to record a confirmed case of Covid-19. But like many around the world, people in this small town have made an array of adjustments to reduce their risk of catching the novel coronavirus.

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What was it like to be the only person in a museum under lockdown?

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What was it like to be the only person in a museum under lockdown?

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A new six-part audio series launching today will give the public a glimpse into life at six museums and galleries in England under lockdown, as told through the eyes of caretakers and security staff.

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Caretakers offer a glimpse behind the scenes in new audio series

A new six-part audio series launching today will give the public a glimpse into life at six museums and galleries in England under lockdown, as told through the eyes of caretakers and security staff.

The Caretakers will offer listeners a reimagined take on the traditional museum tour; each episode focuses on one object, chosen and narrated by a member of the institution's security or maintenance team.

The series aims to give listeners "rare access into the hidden worlds of museums and galleries and the people that have been looking after them during the Covid-19 pandemic".

The provenance of each object will only be revealed a day after the episode has been broadcast; the hope is that this will inspire an alternative and more contemplative approach to engaging with culture.

Listeners will be encouraged to create and submit their own creative responses to the collections that are featured, in order to generate an online gallery of "reimagined treasures" created by the public, which will be documented on Twitter by @caretakertales.

The series was conceived by contemporary artist Eloise Moody, who is also the project's curator. "With the closure of museums and arts organisations throughout the country, the people with access to the nation's cultural treasures are security and caretaking teams," she said.

"At a time when previously overlooked workers are recognised as essential, The Caretakers extends this reframing of importance and reliance to the cultural sector. While security and caretaking staff are the only people allowed inside our national museums and galleries, The Caretakers allow us to perch invisibly on their shoulders, seeing what takes their interest and noticing what they stop to consider. We are granted a personal tour offering fresh perspectives on suspended collections."

The project is support by the arts organisation Metal Southend, whose assistant director, Andrea Cunningham, said: "The Caretakers project, conceived by artist Eloise Moody, is a powerful opportunity to amplify those marginalised voices working in the cultural sector in a beautiful and intriguing way at a moment in history that is reframing all our thinking."

Each episode will be broadcast daily by Metal Southend and the participating museums and galleries via social media.

The six participating institutions are:

Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery

Kettle's Yard

Museum of London

Cutty Sark, Royal Museums Greenwich

Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford

Southend Museums

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What was it like to be the only person in a museum under lockdown? | Museums Association

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Caretakers offer a glimpse behind the scenes in new audio series A new six-part audio series launching today will give the public a glimpse into life at six museums and galleries in England under lockdown, as told through the eyes of caretakers and security staff.

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What does the Covid-19 pandemic mean for Australian museums?

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What does the Covid-19 pandemic mean for Australian museums?

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Australia has a great number of small museums, many of them funded either privately or by local government, and many of them voluntarily run. The economic impact of forced closure, no visitors and no income is already devastating, as it has been on the whole of the cultural sector. Many remote Aboriginal communities remain isolated due to the vulnerability of their residents.

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From adversity comes great opportunity, says Alec Coles

On the night that the world recorded its worst night for new Covid-19 cases, Western Australia recorded three - each one, a quarantined traveller returning from overseas.

Mark McGowan, the premier of Western Australia, was receiving approval ratings of between 93% and 97% for his handling of the crisis. Community transmission in the state is virtually zero and Perth - for so long dogged with the unflattering tag of "world's most isolated city" - is now celebrating that epithet.

That, pretty much, has been the Australian story. At the time of writing, every state and territory has been appearing to get on top of the virus (with the exception of Victoria, which is experiencing an alarming resurgence) and, while there is no room for complacency, across the whole of Australia, the 106 deaths from the 8,600 cases pales when compared with hotspots elsewhere.

As a result, states and territories are lifting their restrictions and most of the larger Australian museums and galleries reopened some weeks ago.

What will the pandemic mean for Australian museums in the future? It is a question that occupies me more than most, as we race towards the opening of the new Western Australian Museum in Perth, this coming November.

An AUD$400 million (about £235m) development, Covid-19 has caused us to rethink the interfaces with our many interactive exhibits; to contemplate our staff welcoming visitors to a "hyper-permeable" space from behind polycarbonate screens; and working out what we have to sacrifice from our recurrent budget to pay the increased cleaning bills.

These issues are no different to those facing any other major museum, or gallery, they are just brought into focus by the scale of our project and imminence of its completion.

For all the talk of new cleaning regimes and changing visitor behaviours (a recent survey in Australia suggested that most visitors want to come back, but are hesitant about "hands-on" interactive exhibits), it is the economic and geopolitical realities that may ultimately have the greatest impact on museums. large and small.

Australia has a great number of small museums, many of them funded either privately or by local government, and many of them voluntarily run. The economic impact of forced closure, no visitors and no income is already devastating, as it has been on the whole of the cultural sector. Many remote Aboriginal communities remain isolated due to the vulnerability of their residents.

The benefits of being a thinly populated "island continent" are plain to see. Close the ports and airports and you have eliminated the main source of infection. The consequence of this, however, in the months and years ahead, will be a dearth of overseas tourists.

Australia's relative success, so far, at controlling the spread of the virus, owes much to the speed and effectiveness with which it closed its international borders. Having built an impressive and increasing tourism market in east Asia, it is soul-destroying to see the millions of potential visitors lost to us.

Those borders are not going to open any time soon, and, when they eventually do, how many people will have lost the urge to travel through busy airports and other transport hubs? How many will be able to afford the hiked airfares from the limited services provided by far fewer carriers?

Or, perhaps, international travel will emulate the manic scenes in British pubs on "Super Saturday", with everyone be so desperate to escape the confines of their own country that they will reignite the flames of this smouldering market?

And speaking of smouldering, that word probably accurately describes the current relationship with one of our greatest trading partners, China. Australia's involvement in the call for an investigation into the origin of the virus in China, combined with some risible xenophobia directed against Asian migrants, has caused the Chinese Government to warn its students not to study in Australia because of "racial incidents targeting people of Asian descent".

Back home, just as in every other country in the world, public sector debt will soar and government spending will, understandably, be prioritised on health, education and policing. At a time when we need cultural content more than ever, public funding, at least, will be ever harder to secure.

There has been much focus on digital transformation and, ironically, the temporary closure of some museums has provided "space" (time and money), for many museums to increase and improve their digital content and reach. The Western Australian Museum's website has never been richer: its social media presence never greater.

We have all been creating our Covid-19 collections, many of them digital, although you do wonder about the sustained public interest in a million social media posts about "How we adapted to Covid-19".

I certainly do not hold with those who believe that, in a post-Covid world, digital experiences will replace actual ones. The argument about the negative impact of the digital revolution on visitation has been deployed many times before and, so far, has been seen to be spurious.

However, as we know, from adversity comes great opportunity. Covid-19 may be the spur for our sector to get its digital act together. Apart from anything else, it may help us manage our visitation better through more pre-bookings and organised events.

It may allow us to focus more meaningfully on our proximal audiences, and it may help us establish our museums at the heart of their respective communities, not just as safe places for unsafe ideas, but as safe places to be.
Alec Coles is the chief executive officer of the Western Australian Museum

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What does the Covid-19 pandemic mean for Australian museums? | Museums Association

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From adversity comes great opportunity, says Alec Coles On the night that the world recorded its worst night for new Covid-19 cases, Western Australia recorded three - each one, a quarantined traveller returning from overseas. Mark McGowan, the premier of Western Australia, was receiving approval ratings of between 93% and 97% for his handling of the crisis.

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Local authority-funded museums across the UK are facing an uncertain future as cash-strapped councils wait to find out whether national governments will provide additional financial support.

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Museum services at risk as local authorities wait to find out if more help will come from central government

Local authority-funded museums across the UK are facing an uncertain future as cash-strapped councils wait to find out whether national governments will provide additional financial support.

Tom Riordan, the chief executive of Leeds City Council, recently warned that overspending due to the Covid-19 crisis could force it to take "draconian measures", meaning non-statutory services such as cultural institutions could end. The council runs nine museums and heritage sites.

Similar financial challenges are widespread across the UK. In recent research by the BBC, at least five English councils warned that they may meet the criteria for issuing a section 114 notice. This means a council cannot balance its budget and prevents any new expenditure except for safeguarding vulnerable people and statutory services.

The BBC found that more than 150 councils were forecasting a combined budget shortfall of at least £3.2bn. Six councils said they were planning an emergency budget and 12 more were planning an in-year budget.

Many town and city museums could be at risk if councils have to cut their costs. Tony Butler, the chief executive of Derby Museums and a steering group member for the English Civic Museums Network (ECMN), says that while the situation for these museums is generally not as urgent as that facing independents, there is huge uncertainty about the future.

Some of the 45 museum services in the ECMN sit within local government and others are run by trusts, but for most the local authority is a major source of income.

"The challenge that most civic museums will face won't come this financial year. It will come next financial year and the years after that," says Butler. "Partly that is because local authorities themselves don't know the extent to which central government will give them any additional support.

"At the moment it feels as though there is a lack of clarity from central government regarding future funding for local authorities."

Butler says Derby Museums has found itself facing the twin challenges of a reduction in its commercial income and uncertainty about future local authority support: "We're not at immediate risk of closure, but we do look into the future and see this double bind".

Derby City Council provides about 35% of the museum trust's annual income. The council has indicated it intends to continue with a similar level of support next financial year, but "a lot depends on negotiations with central government", says Butler.

The councils facing the biggest deficits are often in big cities. The largest is forecast by Birmingham City Council, which expects a budget shortfall of £212m this financial year.

Birmingham Museums Trust, which manages nine venues in the city, said it was in ongoing discussions with key stakeholders including the council, which provides just under 40% of its income.

"Our priority now is working to secure the long-term financial sustainability of the trust, so we are in a position to eventually reopen all of our sites," said a spokeswoman for the museum trust, which has not yet announced reopening dates.

"The government must recognise that for many museums a high proportion of our income is dependent on visitors. The impact of closing our doors over the last few weeks and the decreased footfall expected over the coming months ahead with have a significant impact on independent museum trusts.

"We cannot wait to welcome visitors back as soon as it is practical to do so, but significant investment will be needed to ensure the long-term sustainability of museums and the sector."

Manchester City Council is expecting a budget shortfall of £133m this year, increasing to £160m next year. Councillor Carl Ollerhead, executive member for finance, said: "Let's not dress this up - the picture is bleak."

The council's executive member for culture, leisure and skills, Lutfhur Rahman, wrote an open letter to culture secretary Oliver Dowden last month calling for urgent support for the city's cultural sector.

"We will not stand by in Manchester and watch our theatres, museums, and galleries take their last gasp," said Rahman. "Every day we hear from organisations across the city that tell us they are coming closer and closer to their final curtain."

"Without more support, and crucially without being able to have a say in what support is needed and what the future could look like if the right support was in place, this could easily be the end of the road for many artists and cultural organisations, and for what has been for generations the life-blood of our city."

Leeds expects a shortfall of £60.6m this year. But despite the chief executive's warning, a spokesman said that no services have yet been identified at risk.

A statement from the council said: "Our libraries, museums and galleries are a cornerstone of our city's heritage - providing both educational opportunities for our young people and making Leeds an attractive place to live, work and visit. They remain an integral and part of our plans for the future of Leeds.

"Alongside local authorities across the UK, the Covid-19 pandemic has presented us with unprecedented financial challenges and we are being forced to plan for all possible contingencies should we be unable to secure further funding or financial flexibilities from central government. No decisions have been made about which services this could affect.

"We are fully committed to celebrating our city and supporting culture and the arts within council and in the wider cultural community both now and in the future."

Several Scottish councils are also expecting large budget shortfalls. The Highlands Council expects a worse case shortfall of £96.9m. And City of Edinburgh and Aberdeen City councils said they could each fall short by more than £80m in a worst case scenario.

Highlands High Life, a charity owned by the Highlands Council which manages eight visitor attractions including museums, has not yet responded to a request for comment from Museums Journal about how the expected shortfall could impact museums.
Failing partnerships
In some places, the effects of the crisis have already been seen. Vivacity, a charitable trust which managed Peterborough Museum and Art Gallery as well as other sports, arts, leisure, and heritage venues for Peterborough City Council, terminated its contract with the authority in June "as a direct result of the financial impact of Covid-19".

This triggered a 90-day transition period during which the trust will work with the council to hand back services.

The council said a strong arts, leisure and cultural offer was "vitally important" to the city as it comes out of lockdown. It has begun a review of the services to consider how they might be delivered in the future - either by the council alone, or in partnership with others.

It will also "work closely with Vivacity as it discusses the future with its 500 strong workforce".

Guildford Borough Council has discussed putting a planned £18m redevelopment of Guildford Museum on hold, as well as pausing other projects. A report for the council's executive on 23 June recommended stopping work on the redevelopment, but a decision was deferred to allow for to allow for discussion with partner organisations. The proposals will be "resubmitted when there [is] a clearer picture of future funding".

If local museums can survive, Derby's Tony Butler believes there is an opportunity for them to contribute to reimagining town and city centres amid a decline in retail, which he says the Covid-19 crisis is accelerating.

"We all think we've got a really important role to play in future recovery," he says about the ECMN. "In the meantime our big concern is to ensure that there is clarity and stability of funding for our organisations".

Sharon Heal, director of the Museums Association, said: "We are deeply concerned about the plight of town and city museums throughout the UK. Local authorities are in a difficult position because of the extra costs associated with dealing with Covid-19 and the prospect of future cuts to their budgets.

"We are already hearing of major local authorities that are considering not funding their museums and galleries because they are non-statutory services. We are deeply concerned that some museums will not be able to reopen after lockdown. Museums are vital civic spaces and can play a critical role in rebuilding and recovery with their communities - but they need funding to be able to do that."

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Fears for the future of civic museums | Museums Association

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Museum services at risk as local authorities wait to find out if more help will come from central government Local authority-funded museums across the UK are facing an uncertain future as cash-strapped councils wait to find out whether national governments will provide additional financial support.

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Rethinking the role of museums in a time of crisis

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Rethinking the role of museums in a time of crisis

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As museums around the world have increasingly committed to making themselves digitally accessible to the public during lockdown, we have been flooded by new cultural content available online. While Italian museums have been mainly involved in a “broadcasting” approach, museums in other countries have strived to enable new and different engagement with audiences. What do these two approaches tell us about the roles museums want to fulfil and the relationship they want to create with their communities?

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As museums around the world have increasingly committed to making themselves digitally accessible to the public during lockdown, we have been flooded by new cultural content available online. While Italian museums have been mainly involved in a "broadcasting" approach, museums in other countries have strived to enable new and different engagement with audiences. What do these two approaches tell us about the roles museums want to fulfil and the relationship they want to create with their communities?
Museums at the time of COVID-19

Museums have been living in strange times since the outbreak of COVID-19 and the partial or total closure of their premises in spring 2020. If this has been a time of uncertainty and fear for all individuals and organisations, it has also been a time of crisis for the museum sector, with increasing furlough in several countries and a general reduction in funding. The mere existence of museums and cultural institutions has been threatened, as they have had to shut their doors to visitors and pause or stop many of their activities.

This is not the first time that museums are called to face a world-wide crisis and need to cope with an extraordinary (in the sense of out-of-the-ordinary) situation. The two world wars of the 20 th century also marked a crucial moment in the history and evolution of museums: many suffered closures and take-overs during wartime, with their collections seriously threatened (Kavanagh, 1994). However, museums also used such dramatic events to rethink or discover their social function, as some provided children with schooling and contributed to disseminate knowledge about health and welfare among the public during WWI (Hooper-Greenhill, 1991). Nonetheless, this is the first time since WWII that museums have had to shut down. Technology seems to have facilitated this effort, allowing museums to keep their relationship with their communities alive during closure. The current situation may thus be another occasion for museums to rediscover and fulfil their social function. Different situations exist in different countries, and different problems may affect different museums during lockdown, but all museums face similar challenges: among them, the need to develop an effective emergency plan and identify the necessary strategies to pursue their mission and encourage public trust. The present situation has called for a profound rethinking about the roles and purposes of museums: by stepping out of their comfort zones, museums may really reconsider their priorities and embrace new opportunities. It is indeed a time of crisis, but also a time of change and hope: we need to interrogate about how museums have been preparing to change and what approaches are reflected in their practices.

Meme by Museum Memes. Original picture: Caravaggio, Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy, 1606. Private collection, Rome.

Reflections on museum practices

During this challenging time, national and international museum organisations (e.g. UNESCO, ICOM, the UK Museums Association and NEMO) have committed to providing resources, guidelines and survey results as a first-aid kit to face this situation. Online discussions have also sparked across the museum sector, with professionals and researchers sharing their experience of the lockdown and reflecting on their concerns and hopes. The great variety of relevant online events confirms that the museum sector has immediately felt the need to connect and keep the dialogue going.

In the meantime, museums in different countries have reacted in different ways to the emergency by adopting communicative strategies which may be divided into two main approaches. One is represented by the commitment to massively project themselves beyond their closed walls and publish content in different digital formats to cater for different target groups. This approach is reflected by a (mostly) unilateral communication that moves from the museum towards the public: the museum publishes content which is supposed to appeal to the public and provide them with what they might need to (virtually) access its collections/exhibitions. The other approach is based on a more empathetic and collaborative attitude, in which museums try to invite people to take action and personally do something: for instance, museums may ask people to publish content themselves (e.g. pictures or text) and then museums collect or react to this content.

In Italy, the first approach has been predominant. A general preoccupation has seemed to be fostering the museum visibility during lockdown and remarking that museums are still there for everybody. The desire to promote their presence has resulted in a variety of actions. For instance, many museums have strived to provide services to schools and support teachers and families during lockdown (see e.g. the project organised by Mart, Trento). Museums, big and small, have been concerned about the public access to their collections and exhibitions and have thus committed to digitise them and create virtual tours. Those institutions that had already been able to do this before the lockdown have benefitted from their online collections to create new content or repurpose existing content to promote public engagement, e.g. through podcasts, live videos, virtual and 3D tours, as well as online exhibitions.

The variety of digital initiatives organised by Italian museums has been astounding. Some museums (e.g. the Museo Egizio in Turin) have launched an online series of videos with their director or other staff moving through the spaces of their museums and telling histories about the collections. New hashtags were launched by ICOM Italia, as well as by individual museums, to promote museums' activities during lockdown. Other remarkable examples have been the 3D tours of the Vatican Museums, a drone view of Pompeii, and hyper-definition reproductions of artworks of the Pinacoteca di Brera. The Castello di Rivoli has even announced the opening of a new museum location, "Digital Cosmos", i.e. a website with artworks specifically created for the digital realm. Of course, this is only a small sample of the wide array of content made available by Italian museums during lockdown, but they all seem to apply to the first approach.

Locked in our houses, we have thus been overwhelmed by the amount of digital content all at once available within a hand's reach - probably experiencing a virtual overload. However, rather than creating real interactions, all these efforts for "broadcasting" digital content seem to be based on the (assumed) visitors' need for culture, without actually considering what people may really need (Delgado & Arias, 2020) to get through this difficult time: in other words, have Italian museums really asked themselves what their communities need the most, and if so, have they tried to provide such services and create or continue interactions with them?

In other countries, a wider range of activities has been carried out, spanning from online mindfulness sessions ( Stirling Smith art gallery) to recipe box home deliveries ( Birmingham Museums). The main aim has been to respond to the needs of communities (e.g. combating social distancing and isolation) and enable new and different engagement with audiences, for instance by asking people to recreate famous artworks and thus give them something to actively do during lockdown (e.g. #museumchallenge and #artathome). Although similar initiatives were promoted by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities (MIBACT) with the projects "Art you ready?" and "L'arte ti somiglia" (literally, the art looks like you), most of the related posts on social media were published by cultural institutions rather than individuals, showing scarce public participation in these initiatives. Another important strand of work that many museums beyond the Italian borders have committed to carrying out is related to contemporary collecting of COVID-19. Discussions around whether and how to approach collecting COVID-19 has sparked in several countries, e.g. by commissioning diaries of daily life or art products and including documentation in the form of oral history and daily objects. Several different museums have started to collect either "physical or digital objects, reflecting the voices and experiences" of people, as museums realise they "have a responsibility to create a national memory and record of the pandemic" (Knott, 2020). This commitment places community knowledge and experience at the heart of museum practices, acknowledging the active role of audiences. Sharon Heal has claimed that not only do museums need to keep the public engaged through digital innovation, but they also need to "engage the public in any contemporary collecting of Covid-19" and support their communities (Heal, 2020). Institutions committed to this effort include museums and archives in the UK (e.g. Science Museum Group, Museums and Galleries Edinburgh and V&A), other European countries (e.g. the Amsterdam Museum, the Medical Museion and the Wien Museum), the US and Canada (e.g. the National Museum of American History, the International Center of Photography and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights), as well as Australia and New Zealand (e.g. the National Museum of Australia, the State Library of New South Wales and Auckland Museum). This type of engagement is related to the second approach, which tends to be adopted by museums around the world but not by Italian museums.

Conclusion

This challenging situation has resulted in different reactions by museums in Italy and in other countries, which reflect different approaches and different roles they aim to accomplish. Although Italian museums have committed to digital innovation, they don't seem to have prioritised meaningful interaction to accomplish their social function during lockdown. What does this tell us about the role they aim to play today? What lessons are museums learning at the time of COVID-19 and how can they build them into the "new normal" (Rees Leahy, 2020)? Although perhaps a single answer cannot be found right now, museums may benefit from this time to reconsider their role within society.

References

Delgado, C., & Arias, M. P. (2020). Museums & Memes -1. Cultural Practice.

Heal, S. (2020). Covid-19: the ethics of contemporary collecting. Museums Journal.

Hooper-Greenhill, E. (1991). Museum and gallery education. Leicester University Press.

Kavanagh, G. (1994). Museums and the First World War: A Social History. Leicester University Press.

Knott, J. (2020). Amgueddfa Cymru launches Covid-19 collecting drive. Museums Journal.

Rees Leahy, H. (2020). Cultural Access and the 'New Normal'. Cultural Practice.

Links

Amsterdam Museum, Corona in the city: a digital exhibition about Amsterdam in the age of corona. https://www.amsterdammuseum.nl/en/exhibitions/corona-city (Accessed 27 May 2020)

Auckland Museum, Collecting Covid-19: 100 lockdown objects. https://www.aucklandmuseum.com/your-museum/at-home/collecting-covid-19 (Accessed 27 May 2020)

Birmingham Museums, Recipe Boxes. https://www.birminghammuseums.org.uk/recipe-boxes/recipe-boxes (Accessed 28 May 2020)

Canadian Museum for Human Rights, Share your story. https://humanrights.ca/stories/share-your-story#/ (Accessed 27 May 2020)

Castello di Rivoli, Digital Cosmos. https://www.castellodirivoli.org/en/mostra/cosmodigitale/ (Accessed 28 May 2020)

ICOM, Covid-19. https://icom.museum/en/covid-19/ (Accessed 30 May 2020)

ICOM Italia, La cultura non si ferma. http://www.icom-italia.org/eventi/laculturanonsiferma/

International Center of Photography, #ICPConcerned: A Forum for All to Document the COVID-19 Pandemic. https://www.icp.org/news/icpconcerned-a-forum-for-all-to-document-the-covid-19-pandemic (Accessed 27 May 2020)

Mart, Entrare nell'opera. http://www.mart.tn.it/entrarenellopera (Accessed 3 June 2020)

Medical Museion, Medical Museion collects the Corona epidemic in Denmark. https://www.museion.ku.dk/en/indsamling-corona-epidemien/ (Accessed 27 May 2020)

MIBACT, Art you ready? Il flash mob digitale del patrimonio culturale. https://www.beniculturali.it/mibac/export/MiBAC/sito-MiBAC/Contenuti/MibacUnif/Comunicati/visualizza_asset.html_82728946.html (Accessed 28 May 2020)

MIBACT, L'arte ti somiglia. https://www.beniculturali.it/mibac/export/MiBAC/sito-MiBAC/Contenuti/MibacUnif/Comunicati/visualizza_asset.html_241946610.html (Accessed 28 May 2020)

Museo Egizio, Le passeggiate del direttore. https://twitter.com/MuseoEgizio/status/1240579528600227841 (Accessed 28 May 2020)

Museum for London, Collecting COVID. https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/museum-for-london-collecting-covid(Accessed 27 May 2020)

Museums Association, Amgueddfa Cymru launches Covid-19 collecting drive. https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/news/national-museum-wales-launches-covid-19-collecting-drive?utm_campaign=1744086_13052020%20MA%20newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Museums%20Association&dm_i=2VBX,11DQU,5TFGBJ,3YHL2,1(Accessed 27 May 2020)

Museums Association, Covid-19: the ethics of contemporary collecting. https://www.museumsassociation.org/news/21032020-COVID-19-joint-statement (Accessed 30 May 2020)

Museums Association, Covid-19. https://www.museumsassociation.org/ethics/03042020-code-of-ethics-covid-19-contemporary-collecting-statement (Accessed 27 May 2020)

Museums & Galleries Edinburgh, Collecting Covid-19. https://www.edinburghmuseums.org.uk/covid-19-contemporary-collecting(Accessed 27 May 2020)

National Museum of American History, STATEMENT: National Museum of American History Implements Collecting Strategy in Response to COVID-19 Pandemic. https://americanhistory.si.edu/press/releases/statement-national-museum-american-history-implements-collecting-strategy-response (Accessed 27 May 2020)

National Museum of Australia, Bridging the Distance. https://www.nma.gov.au/about/bridging-the-distance-pandemic-experiences (Accessed 27 May 2020)

NEMO, Museums during COVID-19. https://www.ne-mo.org/advocacy/our-advocacy-work/museums-during-covid-19.html(Accessed 30 May 2020)

Pinacoteca di Brera, Hyper Definition. https://pinacotecabrera.org/en/collezioni/hyper-definition/ (Accessed 28 May 2020)

Pompei, Drone a Pompei. https://www.pompei.it/scavi/scavi-pompei-drone.htm (Accessed 28 May 2020)

Science Museum Group, Collecting Covid-19. https://www.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/project/collecting-covid-19/ (Accessed 27 May 2020)

State Library of New South Wales, #NSWatHome. https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/nswathome (Accessed 27 May 2020)

Stirling Smith art gallery, Mindful Art - Learn Mindfulness through Art Appreciation. https://www.facebook.com/events/288183902180921/?event_time_id=288183898847588 (Accessed 28 May 2020)

Unesco, Covid-19 Response. https://en.unesco.org/covid19 (Accessed 30 May 2020)

Vatican Museums, Virtual tours. http://www.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani/it/collezioni/musei/tour-virtuali-elenco.html (Accessed 28 May 2020)

V&A, Pandemic Objects. https://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/pandemic-objects (Accessed 27 May 2020)

Wien Museum, Corona in Vienna: a historical collection project. https://www.wienmuseum.at/en/corona-collection-project(Accessed 27 May 2020)

Author

Dr Chiara Bartolini is an Adjunct Professor in Translation at the University of Bologna. She holds a PhD in Translation, Interpreting and Intercultural Studies. Her research interests mainly involve museum communication and the translation of museum discourse. She is fascinated by the cultural heritage sector and is a keen museum visitor.

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Rethinking the role of museums in a time of crisis

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As museums around the world have increasingly committed to making themselves digitally accessible to the public during lockdown, we have been flooded by new cultural content available online. While Italian museums have been mainly involved in a "broadcasting" approach, museums in other countries have strived to enable new and different engagement with audiences.

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The virtues and vices of virtual museum tours

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The virtues and vices of virtual museum tours

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In the Rijksmuseum I find myself wandering off from the paintings. I click my way down the brightly lit corridors to see if I can ride the lift. I can’t. The same mood takes me at the British Museum. I linger in the gift shop. There’s a sale on. In the cafe, beers are in the fridge, but no one is around to put the cakes out. On a whim I click on the sidebar and drop down to the basement, finding myself looking at a fire extinguisher and a sign for the members’ cloakroom. ‘Virtual tour’ seems a rather grand term for these lonely digital ‘experiences’. Tour implies guidance and direction; instead I have an overwhelming sense of aimlessness.

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In the Rijksmuseum I find myself wandering off from the paintings. I click my way down the brightly lit corridors to see if I can ride the lift. I can't. The same mood takes me at the British Museum. I linger in the gift shop. There's a sale on. In the cafe, beers are in the fridge, but no one is around to put the cakes out. On a whim I click on the sidebar and drop down to the basement, finding myself looking at a fire extinguisher and a sign for the members' cloakroom. 'Virtual tour' seems a rather grand term for these lonely digital 'experiences'. Tour implies guidance and direction; instead I have an overwhelming sense of aimlessness.

Virtual tours of museums and galleries are among the many edifying home activities offered to us during lockdown to replace going to the pub. We are encouraged to travel to hitherto unexplored arts institutions, or revisit favourites in our pyjamas. Google Street View powers many of these virtual tours: some are made in collaboration with Google Arts & Culture, while smaller organisations do it themselves using Google's technology by mounting a 360-degree camera on to a smartphone. Several institutions have designed their own, while others have transformed themselves into computer games.

Most of these tours have been made in the past five years to support in-person visits. They helped make museums and galleries more accessible and were useful for planning school trips or enabling individuals with additional requirements to scope out their visits. In this capacity, they are far more useful than the paper map you pay a quid for on arrival. Now though, in the absence of real-life exhibitions to recommend, some media outlets are suggesting them as a substitute for the experience itself.

The recent fetishisation of 'experiences', the consumption of places rather than of things, has led to some museums privileging their buildings over their collections, and this tendency is borne out in the priorities of many virtual museums. It is nearly 50 years since John Berger popularised Walter Benjamin's description of the aura of artworks in his television series Ways of Seeing, positing that the loss of a sense of place and time was the greatest failure of photographic reproductions. Though virtual tours offer a unique experience - an encounter with an object in the place it happens to be - their efforts to share a sense of place and time with visitors sometimes risk eclipsing the object entirely.

As I navigate cultural spaces using a tool designed to map streets, it's hard not to feel that architecture is taking precedence over the sharing of knowledge. What tends to be missing are the explanations of why objects are where they are, which many museums have worked hard to highlight in recent years. Ethnographic museums fare worst on virtual tours. The Google Arts & Culture tour of the Musée Quai Branly makes the museum feel like a well-lit hoard. A side room of 17th-century paintings from the Ethiopian Coptic church of Abbas Antonios cloisters the digital visitor in a quasi-sacred space, but this aesthetically pleasing experience omits the violent history of how the 12 paintings were taken away during the notorious Mission Dakar-Djibouti, the ethnographic expedition led by Marcel Griaule through French colonies in Africa in 1931-33, in which many artworks and sacred objects were acquired by theft, blackmail and bribery. Far from challenging partial or colonial representations, the Quai Branly's virtual tour reinforces them.

The visual experience can vary greatly. In contrast with the pixelated gloom of the Google Street View tour of the Hermitage, the photography in the Courtauld Gallery's bespoke virtual tour is exceptional. Commissioned to record the galleries before their temporary closure while the building is renovated, it allows you to zoom in to see the texture of each brushstroke in Édouard Manet's Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882). But I soon realise that my digital self is in fact wearing concrete shoes: I have to stay in the middle of the room. Déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863-68) will always be a trapezoid however much I tap away at my keyboard.

It is when a building has a significance that goes beyond mere architectural display that virtual tours come into their own. The Anne Frank House, for instance, pairs the spaces you can navigate with descriptions from her diary. We see the annexe through her eyes. When you are at the attic window, the only one at which Frank could daydream as all others were blacked out, you are presented with the quotation: 'As long as this still exists [...] I cannot be sad.'

I could stay in the Museo Frida Kahlo all afternoon. As you are guided around the Casa Azul by pastel-blue arrows and a candy-coloured map, it is impossible not be drawn in by the details: a cushion embroidered with despierta corazon dormido ('wake up sleeping heart'); Diego Rivera's photograph propped up on a box of Lefranc pastels; and a vitrine of plastic figurines. As our world shrinks to our domestic spaces perhaps the intimacy of a house museum can resonate where grander museums leave us cold. Or perhaps this is just property porn (I am also googling yellow floor paint in a separate tab).

The technology behind these virtual experiences owes much to the most popular video game of the 1990s: Myst. The game asks us to adopt the character of the 'Stranger' and solve puzzles that open up new fantasy landscapes to explore. Myst has something that many museum virtual experiences lack: a sense of direction, agency and human contact. In his influential article, 'The Exhibitionary Complex' (1988) Tony Bennett applied Foucault's analysis of 'disciplinary institutions' such as asylums and prisons to the architecture of the Victorian museum, revealing museums as spaces of constant observation, in which visitors watch each other and gallery staff watch visitors. Surveillance stifles our giggles and ensures that, by and large, we remain on the right side of a barrier. These codified behaviours are the reason why many people find museums unwelcoming. But the people-watching can be part of the fun. It's the feeling of being somewhere. Wandering around an empty virtual museum can feel less like an exciting after-hours experience and more like the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse.

Transforming the museum into a game has been one solution to the loneliness of the virtual tour, often uneasily redesigned as a scholarly form of leisure or as a leisurely form of education. Plumping for the former approach, in April this year the Getty released an 'Art Generator' for players to upload chosen artworks from the museum's collection to Animal Crossing, a Nintendo game created by Katsuya Eguchi. To a large extent, this functions like the software used by museums to design exhibitions, with which gallery spaces are mapped to scale and curators can furnish their virtual dolls' houses with digitised artworks. This development has been welcomed by designers and art handlers alike as it promises the eventual demise of the fragile cardboard model with its unreliable Blu-Tack and illegible notations.

In May, the Centre Pompidou released its first video game, Prisme 7. This requires you to adopt a swirl of dots as an avatar and move through a series of spatial challenges on the hunt for craggy blue diamonds that reward you with artworks. Level one is a witty take on being in a museum: if you touch a barrier then you lose 'creative energy'. Less amusingly, only male artists are included on the first level, a sadder reminder of being in many museum spaces. As I struggle through the maze inspired by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers' inside-out architecture, I'm reminded of getting lost at the Pompidou when I first lived in Paris. After 30 minutes I had slunk away having not seen any art, my 18-year-old self too mortified to ask anyone where the galleries actually were. Level two appears deeply indebted to Vera Molnár, whose painting Identiques mais différents (2010) is one of the prizes. We are asked to imagine ourselves as drawing machines, as she did in her early computer drawings, and have to fathom the predetermined rules that allow us to make patterns. But as the game continues, the already fragile links between the artworks, the Pompidou and the game dissipate. The artworks become something to be acquired in a rush rather than to be looked at.

Interactive websites are another platform for sharing an institution's collection. History Connected is the product of a relationship summarised by its URL - britishmuseum.withgoogle.com - reminding us that tech giants are just as hungry for cultural capital as oil companies and banks. Together they have founded 'The Museum of the World'. As a 'visitor' you can 'jump back in time' and make connections between objects 'across time and space'. Information about the individual objects is richer than that provided by most online museum databases, but History Connected fails to show the strong connections implied by the infographics. The Heart Sutra of the Chuson-ji Temple in Japan and the rock art of Brandberg in Namibia are connected by a green line that fades to ochre as you dive forwards and back on a timeline stratified by continent - but what, exactly, do they have to do with one other? These opaque connections do more to mystify rather than explain new artefacts - and perpetuate the ideology of the 'universal museum'.

Greater focus on artworks and their creators can be found in the innovations of commercial galleries, some of which have been borrowed from shopping websites. For a week in March Art Basel's online viewing rooms recreated an art fair by hosting selling exhibitions from around the world on its website. Hauser & Wirth has been more conceptual. It has just released a virtual tour of a gallery that is yet to open and a group show that is yet to be staged: 'Beside Itself' at Hauser & Wirth Menorca. On the tour you jump between glowing white circles and click on grey bullseyes to reveal captions. The intimate room in which Luchita Hurtado's Faces for Arcimbaldo (1973) hangs also contains an inviting armchair made cosy with a gorgeous throw. There is an enticing white cross floating next to it. I click and am redirected to the Hauser & Wirth shop: $1,500 for a Max Bill cashmere blanket.

In the next months and years, museums and galleries and our actions within them will need to be redesigned to protect public health. But is the hope that new audiences will access free virtual tours and then, after lockdown ends, become paying exhibition-goers little more than a pipe dream? Digitised museums are at their best when they stop trying to replicate or even replace the gallery and instead expand how we encounter art in the first place. Familiarising people with the architecture of a museum is not enough, but is turning the whole experience into a quest any better? Digital experiences need to tell more complex stories about artworks, adding to their meaning and giving new audiences a sense of belonging; both online and in real life. Gimmicky distraction can certainly be found on these museum 'strolls' - to use Google's term - or through the compulsion to 'collect' digital artworks. But they can feel too similar to the other gameified apps and websites that compete for our attention, especially at this time. Perhaps we need to learn to look and listen slowly and carefully, rather than believing we can 'do' the Louvre over our morning coffee while working from home.

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The virtues and vices of virtual museum tours | Apollo Magazine

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In the Rijksmuseum I find myself wandering off from the paintings. I click my way down the brightly lit corridors to see if I can ride the lift. I can't. The same mood takes me at the British Museum. I linger in the gift shop. There's a sale on.

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Leading the Van Gogh Museum Through a Future With No Tourists

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Leading the Van Gogh Museum Through a Future With No Tourists

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Emilie Gordenker took over at the Amsterdam institution that attracts most of its visitors from abroad just months before the coronavirus lockdown began.

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Emilie Gordenker took over at the Amsterdam institution that attracts most of its visitors from abroad just months before the coronavirus lockdown began.

Emilie Gordenker, the general director of the Van Gogh Museum in front of the museum on May 29. Ms. Gordenker took on the role in February. Credit... Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times

AMSTERDAM - Surrounded by sunflowers, Emilie Gordenker stood on a yellow carpet rolled out in front of the Van Gogh Museum. On June 1, the institution's new director was there to welcome the first visitors back after the coronavirus lockdown. About a dozen were lining up in the sunshine, six feet apart.

"We've waited eleven weeks for this moment," said Ms. Gordenker. "It's fantastic that we can reopen on such a radiant day." Instead of shaking hands, she walked to an automatic hand sanitizer dispenser, demonstrated how to use it, and then pressed through the museum's revolving glass doors.

The first ticket holders, Emma Overheul, 35, and Maarten Halma, 43, took a few tentative steps forward, passing a line of news cameras, like celebrities at a movie premiere. "In the last years there were always such huge groups of people," Ms. Overheul said. "Now is a good opportunity to be here without all the enormous crowds."

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Visitors to the museum arriving on June 1, the first day it reopened after the lockdown. Credit... Piroschka van de Wouw/Reuters

As the visitors continued to trickle in, Ms. Gordenker said she felt happy about reopening, even if the museum could only accommodate a maximum of 750 visitors over a six-hour day. It's a far cry from the 6,000 visitors a day before the pandemic.

"It is going to feel slow," she said. "We're used to having so many more visitors here, but we have to be careful and do what we can." Tickets must now be booked for specific time slots, and Ms. Gordenker said there were still plenty available. "I think people are still waiting to see how it goes," she added.

Attracting visitors was not the problem Ms. Gordenker thought she'd be facing when she became director of one of Amsterdam's most popular museums in February. A profile in the Dutch national newspaper NRC Handelsblad at the time heralded her move from the tranquil Mauritshuis Royal Picture Gallery in the Hague to the Van Gogh Museum with the headline, "It Will Never Be Quiet in the Museum Again." Famous last words.

"We do disaster scenarios and the ones I was more prepared for were flooding or fire," she said in an interview by video a month into the lockdown. "But a pandemic like this with a complete shutdown of the economy? No one has ever seen it before, and I don't think anyone saw it coming."

All museums need visitors to survive, but the Van Gogh Museum is particularly reliant on tourists. Unlike Dutch national museums, which are supported by substantial government subsidies, the Van Gogh relies on earned income - ticket sales, and revenue from the shop and cafe - for 89 percent of its budget. This is in large part because 85 percent of its visitors do not live in the Netherlands. That reality creates additional difficulties during an already challenging time.

So, Ms. Gordenker hopes that more local people will take the same view as Ms. Overheul's perspective, and see this as a special opportunity to come in. That's the message she wants to get out there.

"Now we are reorienting towards our Dutch public," Ms. Gordenker said. "A lot of people here thought that the Van Gogh Museum is for tourists. That was a matter of perception that we need to change."

Stickers on the ground in front of Van Gogh's "Sunflowers" show visitors where they can stand to maintain social distancing. Credit... Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times

For years, one of the museum's biggest struggles was crowd control. In 2015, it opened a new wing with a larger entrance to move the winding lines off the street. When that wasn't enough, the museum introduced a time-slot system, with visitors buying tickets online in advance.

Ms. Overheul, who used to visit the Van Gogh Museum when she was a student in the early 2000s, said that in the last five years or so, the museum was too crowded for her taste. "It's not so relaxed anymore to visit a museum when there are like 30 people standing in front of all the great paintings," she said. "Over the years, it started to feel more like a tourist thing."

This perception wasn't limited to the Van Gogh Museum, but extended to many of the city's major tourist attractions such as the Anne Frank House and red-light district, but also to the city as a whole. Earlier this year, some media outlets were lamenting the tragedy of " over-tourism " in the city, with locals saying that Amsterdam's distinct charm had been lost in the din of nearly 20 million tourists a year.

In recent years, taking cues from popular European destinations such as Venice and Barcelona, Amsterdam implemented measures to rein in unruly tourists, creating fines for "nuisance" behaviors like drinking alcohol in public or urinating in the street, restricting tour bus routes and increasing a tourist tax on hotel stays.

Geerte Udo, the chief executive of Amsterdam & Partners, a nonprofit that advises city authorities on branding and marketing, said those measures were intended to create a "sustainable visitor economy" that wouldn't place "too much of a burden on locals." The tourism industry directly supports about 11 percent of the jobs in Amsterdam, she said, and there were many other indirect economic benefits as well.

The shutdown has given the city a much-needed pause to weigh the value of tourism against its negative impact, Ms. Udo said in a telephone interview. "There are some people that are happy because they say, 'This is the city I fell in love with 20 years ago,'" she said, but there would be negative impacts, too, from lower tourist numbers - particularly for arts and culture.

For every month the museum was closed, it lost about $4.3 million, Ms. Gordenker said. Visitor numbers are likely to stay low for many months. Credit... Piroschka van de Wouw/Reuters

In the meantime, the city is trying to send a message to residents that their local attractions are open to them again. "We are working on a campaign that says, 'Discover your own city, and discover your own country,'" said Ms. Udo, "because we see that there is a potential Dutch market that will not be able to go abroad this summer. They'll say, 'This is our chance.'"

Ms. Gordenker grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with a Dutch mother and an American father, and moved to the Netherlands 12 years ago, after working as curator of Dutch and Flemish painting at the National Gallery of Scotland.

As director of the Mauritshuis, home to an exquisite collection of Dutch Golden Age paintings, including Johannes Vermeer's "Girl with A Pearl Earring," she oversaw the $40.6 million renovation and expansion, reached out to younger audiences with new technologies, such as a virtual Vermeer museum, and invited the public to observe research and restoration projects that were formerly in-house affairs.

Gary Tinterow, the director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and a member of the Van Gogh Museum's supervisory board, said that during her tenure at the Mauritshuis Ms. Gordenker became respected as a cultural leader who had fully integrated into Dutch culture.

"We felt that Emilie had the right balance of local, meaning, Dutch and European, and international contacts," he said in an interview, "as well as the right balance of new thinking and entrepreneurial instincts, with respect for scholarship and art history."

At the Van Gogh Museum, she succeeded the German curator Axel Ruger, who became the director of the Royal Academy of Arts in London last June.

Ms. Gordenker has spent nearly two-thirds of her tenure at the museum so far in lockdown, and will continue to work from home for the coming months as well, she said, to "set a good example for the other staff members who are able to do so." Of more than 300 staff, she said about 40 are essential to keep the museum open to visitors.

"A lot of people here thought that the Van Gogh Museum is for tourists," Ms. Gordenker said. "That was a matter of perception that we need to change." Credit... Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York Times

Her biggest challenge will be to figure out how to make up for the loss of earned income. For every month the museum was closed, it lost about $4.3 million, Ms. Gordenker said. Even with its doors open, it is earning about 10 percent of its former revenues, and visitor numbers are likely to stay low for many months.

"I feel extremely nervous," Ms. Gordenker said in April. "As the month has gone on it's become clearer and clearer that it's going to last a lot longer than we'd hoped. If we keep going like this, we will burn through our reserves. I am worried about the future of the museum and the people who work there."

A few weeks later, Ingrid van Engelshoven, the minister of education, culture and science in the Netherlands, visited the Van Gogh Museum and announced that it would receive additional government support, without specifying an amount. "No one has to worry that the Van Gogh Museum will go under," she said later in an interview. "It will always be there, and we will help them to survive the crisis."

On June 1, when the museum reopened, Ms. Gordenker said she still hadn't heard from the culture ministry about the financial support, but she was a little less anxious.

"I have to do it step by step because there are too many unknowns to factor in right now," she said. "I like to focus on how creative you can get with a little bit less."

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Leading the Van Gogh Museum Through a Future With No Tourists

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Emilie Gordenker took over at the Amsterdam institution that attracts most of its visitors from abroad just months before the coronavirus lockdown began. AMSTERDAM - Surrounded by sunflowers, Emilie Gordenker stood on a yellow carpet rolled out in front of the Van Gogh Museum.

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How British museums are documenting the pandemic

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How British museums are documenting the pandemic

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The buildings may be closed, but curators are hard at work

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A T THE END of March, the prime minister sent a letter to every household in Britain. Printed on headed paper and signed by Boris Johnson, 30m of them went out, telling Britons "you must stay at home". One of them is now in the collection of London's Science Museum in South Kensington. Tilly Blyth, the museum's principal curator, explains that her job is about "making sure we bring a personal experience to the science". At the other end of central London, in Euston, Mel Grant of the Wellcome Collection, which focuses on health and medicine, says the letter is something "we wouldn't actively go out and take". The difference in approach between two museums whose subjects are at the heart of the crisis raises a question that institutions across the country are grappling with: How do you document history that you are living through?

There are three ways of thinking about an answer. The first is speed. The Victoria and Albert Museum ( V& A), an engraved gemstone's throw away from the Science Museum, has had a "rapid response collecting" strategy since 2014. Its collection includes a "pussyhat" of the sort worn by women in a protest the day after Donald Trump's inauguration in January 2017. The aim is to ensure that everyday items are retained along with more uncommon ones. "It's very easy for things we might consider mundane to get thrown away at times like this," says Ms Blyth.

A related problem is that digital materials, while seemingly eternal, often disappear. "The nature of digital collecting means that information is frequently published, amended and removed quickly. If material is not captured at the time, it may be lost forever," says Jason Webber of the UK Web Archive, a joint project of Britain's six legal deposit libraries that aims to archive all British websites annually. The archive does not gather most social-media posts or any personal collections, however, which falls to other curators. For example, people take lots of pictures on their phones but don't necessarily save them. They cannot be rediscovered in a dusty attic years later, says Matt Brosnan, the head curator at the London Transport Museum, so must be gathered now.

Understandably, "there's a real temptation to come running in and grab everything that you possibly can," says Ms Blyth. That is a non-starter. Museums have limited space to stash stuff. Digital materials require storage and maintenance, too. All that costs money, and museums are accountable to the public, whose funds they draw upon, or to donors. They must also be mindful of the ethics of collecting things-such as face masks-that are in short supply. And once something has formally entered a public collection, "you can't get rid of it," says Tristam Hunt, director of the V& A, as the paperwork is horrendous.

That points to the second way of thinking about what to collect, which is focus. The pandemic has touched every sector, industry and region in Britain. It has also spurred all sorts of museums into action. The National Army Museum is documenting the army's role in the crisis. The Florence Nightingale Museum is looking at the emergency Nightingale hospitals. The London Transport Museum is collecting stories from key workers still using the Underground, as well as contemporary signage from the Tube, in buses and elsewhere. Local museums from Ulster to Cardiff to Leeds are documenting the experiences of their communities. But any new material must fit with the existing collection, says Sharon Heal of the Museums Association, an umbrella group. That is why what counts as significant for Ms Blyth at the Science Museum does not for Ms Grant at the Wellcome Collection.

Some museums, such as the National Football Museum in Manchester, have a particularly tricky task: they must document the absence of something. Wiebke Cullen, the collections manager, says she is interested in what people are doing instead of watching or playing football. Stevenage FC, for example, sent pictures of the squad delivering sandwiches and activity packs to their local areas. She is also collecting things like programmes from cancelled games, kit from the postponed Euro 2020 tournament and minutes of meetings from the Football Association. "We want objects to evoke some kind of emotion when people see it," she says. "We're also looking at it if it is a good story. If it's an image and we don't know who the people are, we're probably not collecting it, because you can't tell a story."

That is the third and most important way of thinking about what to collect. The V& A promises treasures of design, the Wellcome Collection offers histories of health and the National Football Museum is a soccer stocker, but at their core, like every other museum in the world, they are in fact places where societies store their stories. "We tend to think of the 3 D objects that museums acquire, but the strong way of acquiring is to think about the stories that come around a subject," says Ms Blyth. "So rather than just acquiring a ventilator, wouldn't it be interesting to talk to a medical team about where that ventilator was based, or maybe to talk to a patient about what it felt like to need a ventilator?" Every Briton who comes out of the pandemic will do so with their own personal stories, based on their unique histories, experiences and ideas of themselves. The same is true of the country's museums. That is how history is made. ■

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "How history is made"

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How British museums are documenting the pandemic

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A T THE END of March, the prime minister sent a letter to every household in Britain. Printed on headed paper and signed by Boris Johnson, 30m of them went out, telling Britons "you must stay at home". One of them is now in the collection of London's Science Museum in South Kensington.

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Shuttered natural history museums fight for survival amid COVID-19 ‘heartbreak’

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Shuttered natural history museums fight for survival amid COVID-19 ‘heartbreak’

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A few months ago, retirement was the furthest thing from David Thomas’s mind. “Then the world went upside down,” recalls the archaeologist from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. In March, the coronavirus pandemic forced the museum to close its doors. No more school groups thronging the interactive exhibit on color, no more corporate dinners or lines of international tourists waiting to pay $23 a head to marvel at gems and fossils. The museum’s income plummeted 60%.

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s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center.
A few months ago, retirement was the furthest thing from David Thomas's mind. "Then the world went upside down," recalls the archaeologist from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. In March, the coronavirus pandemic forced the museum to close its doors. No more school groups thronging the interactive exhibit on color, no more corporate dinners or lines of international tourists waiting to pay $23 a head to marvel at gems and fossils. The museum's income plummeted 60%.

Leaders first asked for early retirements. By early May, they had sliced the staff of 1100 by 20% and furloughed an additional 250 staff members. All other full-time employees now work 3 days a week, mostly from home. Thomas opted to retire early, along with four of the other 38 curators. "It was the right thing to do," he says.

Around the world, natural history museums are shuttered and reeling. On Tuesday, the California Academy of Sciences announced it was furloughing or laying off 40% of its staff. "We will recover, but there is no doubt that we will be in some ways a different institution," says Peter Roopnarine, a paleontologist there.

Museums' reliance on revenue from ticket sales and events makes them among the first scientific institutions to feel the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. "I worry about the long-term health of all natural history museums and the collections that are in our sacred trust," says Shannon Hackett, an ornithologist at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. "It will be very challenging for some museums to reopen at all," adds Scott Cooper, who runs Drexel University's Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.

But the crisis is also spurring museums to adopt or expand practices that, though they may not restore lost revenue, are keeping the public engaged and research ticking: an online biodiversity contest, public discussions on Zoom, a webcam streaming captive corals. Curators are also expanding and refining digital collections that are accessible to both the public and homebound researchers. "We are seeing more changes in the museum industry at this moment than we could push people to make previously," says Julie Stein, director of the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture at the University of Washington, Seattle, whose own institution has been devastated. It had opened a new building in October 2019 and was "headed for record-breaking revenue," Stein says, but the entire campus shut down on 6 March.

Some museums, including the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., have dodged financial cliffs thanks to government support. The Natural History Museum, London, stayed afloat with emergency support from the U.K. government, but it furloughed half its staff until the end of June. Similarly, the Field Museum has thus far avoided layoffs thanks to a cash reserve and the federal paycheck protection program, says President and CEO Richard Lariviere. But 30% of the museum's income comes from ticket sales and related activities, and his operation has already lost $17 million. Given that cases of COVID-19 have yet to peak in Illinois, Lariviere doubts the museum will open this summer, and he worries he will be forced to make layoffs.

Some university museums managed to avoid layoffs now, but may pay a price later if university budgets shrink. Harvard University's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology will likely not reopen as quickly as stand-alone museums, says Director Jane Pickering.

As they worry about the future, researchers are also distraught because they can't do their work now. Travel restrictions have brought fieldwork to a screeching halt-and with it, the addition of more specimens to collections. The American Museum of Natural History alone has canceled 100 expeditions. And researchers can't get into buildings to analyze existing collections. "We have been cut off from our collections, facilities, and colleagues," says Anjali Goswami, a paleobiologist at the Natural History Museum, London.

One trend accelerated by the crisis could help: efforts to digitize natural history collections. At Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, staff working from home have been busy enhancing specimen records in the museumwide database. Many are adding latitude and longitude coordinates to millions of specimens thus far identified only by location names. "There's a tremendous amount of data locked into collections," says Kirk Johnson, director of the National Museum of Natural History, where detailed digital images of pressed plants in the herbarium allow researchers to scrutinize them from afar. "We are now shining the light on the dark data of museums."

Rebecca Albright, a coral biologist at the California Academy of Sciences, is studying the mysteries of coral spawning, which only one other research team has been able to manage in a lab setting. Recently, Albright identified just the right conditions, including water temperature and lighting that re-create changing day length and the cycling of the Moon, to get the coral to reproduce in the lab. When she learned that she couldn't be in the museum when a coral was due to spawn, she and her colleagues set up an infrared webcam. "We never set up a camera before because we didn't need to," she says.

The livestreaming camera allowed them to catch spawning in the act on Earth Day-and also made a big splash on the web. "If we had missed this, we would have had to wait a whole year." Albright says. The corals now have 1.6 million followers. (Video has its limits: One graduate student, eager for a close-up view of the coral life cycle, retrieved coral larvae and installed them in his home aquarium.)

Other scientists have refocused their research on the pandemic itself. Roopnarine previously studied how nature recovered from mass extinctions. Now, he is repurposing his computer models of ecosystem recovery to evaluate how various employment schemes may get economies back on track as lockdowns ease. "Our work has never been more relevant than it is now," he says.

Many see the pandemic as an opportunity for change. "I'm doing more public programs than ever-in virtual formats," says Sabrina Sholts, a biological anthropologist at the National Museum of Natural History. "Communicating science has never been more important," given the pushback in some quarters against evidence-based decision-making.

To engage the public in research, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the California Academy of Sciences in April enlisted thousands of citizen scientists in a global biodiversity effort called the City Nature Challenge. Participants gathered thousands of images of birds, insects, and other wildlife in more than 250 cities to help researchers study urban ecosystems.

The pandemic itself is inspiring new directions. Leonard Krishtalka, director of the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum, wants to expand its focus to include microbes and viruses, which account for 95% of the planet's biodiversity.

At the National Museum of Natural History, Sholts was already thinking along those lines when she pulled together a temporary exhibit inspired by the 2014 Ebola epidemic. "Outbreak," which explores how pathogens spread between animals and people, opened 2 years ago. After COVID-19 erupted, the exhibit also moved online, with a digital version in half a dozen languages; a DIY kit has already been adapted in 41 countries and 30 U.S. states and territories.

"We are in the process of reinventing what natural history museums are for," Johnson says, speaking by phone to a reporter as he walked past the darkened halls of the exhibit. "Museums can play a much more impactful role than they have in the past 50 years."

doi:10.1126/science.abd0587

Liz is a senior correspondent covering many aspects of biology for Science.

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Shuttered natural history museums fight for survival amid COVID-19 'heartbreak'

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s COVID-19 reporting is supported by the Pulitzer Center. A few months ago, retirement was the furthest thing from David Thomas's mind. "Then the world went upside down," recalls the archaeologist from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. In March, the coronavirus pandemic forced the museum to close its doors.

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How COVID-19 Has Thrown Museum Exhibition Planning into Disarray

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How COVID-19 Has Thrown Museum Exhibition Planning into Disarray

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Museum exhibitions take an exceptional amount of planning—from curatorial conception to filling out loan forms and insurance, to shipping, hanging, and displaying works. Getting a show on a museum’s calendar is no simple feat, let alone getting it on the gallery walls. So what happens when a global pandemic puts exhibitions and their scheduling on an indefinite pause?

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As the world continues to exist in a state of suspension, curators, exhibition planners, and museum directors have had to remain nimble and prepared. "I have what I call scenarios," said Robin Groesbeck, the director of exhibitions and interpretation at Arkansas's Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, discussing the museum's postponement of "

: Until" (originally scheduled to go up this summer). "Believe it or not, I'm on scenario 16!"

Like many museums throughout the U.S., Crystal Bridges closed the week of March 15th and has remained in a state of uncertainty up until today, when it announced it would reopen to the public on June 10th. "What we're trying to be is consistent and reliable," said Groesbeck. The museum will be reopening with "

: All Things Being Equal," which has been extended to July 13th and is free.

There's also the issue of timeliness. Many museums coordinate exhibitions specifically tied to moments in history, anniversaries, and broader cultural initiatives. New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, for example, was planning on opening its show "Making The Met: 1870-2020," in celebration of the institution's 150th anniversary, on March 30th. "We are allowing ourselves to let the 150th anniversary spill into the 151st year, which I think is the wise thing to do," said Andrea Bayer, the Met's deputy director for collections and administration. She added that "151 is the new 150! We'll just consider this a mature way to celebrate a birthday when you can't do it on the day itself."

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How COVID-19 Has Thrown Museum Exhibition Planning into Disarray

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As the world continues to exist in a state of suspension, curators, exhibition planners, and museum directors have had to remain nimble and prepared. "I have what I call scenarios," said Robin Groesbeck, the director of exhibitions and interpretation at Arkansas's Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, discussing the museum's postponement of " : Until" (originally scheduled to go up this summer).

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Covid 19 threatens severely museum education

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Covid 19 threatens severely museum education

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Museums say that their main concern is for their audiences:

They say it because it is politically correct

They say it because it brings public money…

But they do not prove it in the way they most often deal with their human resources in the area of education.

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They say it because it is politically correct

They say it because it brings public money...

But they do not prove it in the way they most often deal with their human resources in the area of education

Too many museum educators around the world suffer from uncertain professional status: freelance employment, seasonal work, short-term contracts, internships, etc.
This situation brings several harsh consequences:

Educators are still not fully enough participants of the general museum policy

When the external situation becomes difficult, they are fired or dismissed more easily than any other types of staff

The current pandemic situation turns out to be a terrible proof of this fragility.
Throughout the world, thousands of museum educators have suddenly lost their unstable jobs with no financial backup and a very uncertain and long-term hope to be called again, when museums will reopen for groups of tourists or schools.

No technology appliance can replace completely live museum education.
Technological museum education offerings must be conceived with museum educators
If audiences are first, museum educators must be treated as full-rate staff and not as temporary and dispensable outsiders.

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Covid 19 threatens severely museum education - ICOM CECA

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Museums say that their main concern is for their audiences: They say it because it is politically correct They say it because it brings public money... But they do not prove it in the way they most often deal with their human resources in the area of education Too many museum educators around the world ...

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Exposed by COVID-19: Three Cracks in Cultural Entity Operations to Repair for Reopening (DATA)

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Exposed by COVID-19: Three Cracks in Cultural Entity Operations to Repair for Reopening (DATA)

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COVID-19 is likely to exacerbate these three potential weak spots for cultural organizations. Here’s intel to identify and tackle them as soon as possible.

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COVID-19 is likely to exacerbate these three potential weak spots for cultural organizations. Here's intel to identify and tackle them as soon as possible.

You don't need to spend much time on a news website to spot an article about how the coronavirus pandemic is exposing cracks in everything from healthcare systems, to our food supply chains, to manufacturing, to philanthropy, to the broader economy, and seemingly everything in between.

On a recent call with executives from two major cultural organizations in Philadelphia, one leader used the "cracks in the foundation" metaphor to succinctly communicate his most pressing concerns. He expressed that small cracks in business operations risk growing into fractures that cannot be easily repaired during this challenging time period. It was well said. It was also the first time that we'd paused to consider how this metaphor applied to the cultural sector. More commonly, this concern had been coming up in the form of a frequently-asked question among other cultural executives with which we've spoken:
"What should we make sure we're doing right so that we can recover when our organization reopens?"
Let's acknowledge this:

2020 is going to be a very bad year for cultural organizations. (Just call me "COVID Captain Obvious" for that bold statement.) For most entities, it's going to be a bad year from an overall business standpoint and likely from a mission impact perspective as well. For many, it may even be a challenging year from a survival standpoint. Some of the areas in which cultural organizations were slow to adapt may affect how well an organization is able to recover - if at all.

With that in mind, this may be a sensible goal:

Get to 2021 and set it up for the best possible success. It's going to take a great deal of strategic thinking in 2020 in order to just not mess up 2021. Conditions are evolving quickly. There will be some trial and error as states reopen and learn critical lessons in engaging audiences during a global pandemic. Some mistakes are inevitable, and the difference between success and failure may come down to using the grace of this period of pause to help strengthen our weaknesses.

That's what today's article is about.

Upon reopening, cultural organizations are likely to be tasked with re-engaging audiences with two challenging conditions imposed upon them:

1. Finite resources. Many cultural entities had limited resources even before the pandemic. And many lost significant resources during closures (financial, staff, volunteers, etc.). Upon reopening, entities may be charged with re-engaging audiences with even fewer resources at their disposal - monetary or otherwise.

2. Capacity constraints. It's becoming clear that capacity restraints will be placed upon many organizations. Entities may either choose to limit capacity in the building as their own safety precaution, or a limit may be imposed by the government for periods of time. This means that revenue recovery may be significantly slowed, and it increases the pressure to make sure that every investment counts.

The following three areas represent common weaknesses in the business model of cultural entities prior to COVID-19. Consideration to these areas may prove crucial for organizational survival in some cases - and they need not represent weakness at all! In fact, in this time of closure, some entities may develop strategies to not only patch these cracks, but to lay solid foundation upon reopening.

Strategizing around these three audience engagement areas may transform common weaknesses into organizational strengths upon reopening.

1) Knowing the importance of digital engagement

Make no mistake: The need to engage and interact with audiences online in order to motivate attendance is far from new. (It may be especially important right now, but it's not new.) Those institutions that put in the time and energy to establish their online tone and foundational content creation strategies prior to COVID-19 may be in a better position to succeed than those just now coming to the keyboard.

The data below quantifies the share of media consumption for nearly 3,800 US adults as measured at the end of the year 2019, March 15, 2020 (only two days after the US declared a national emergency), and May 1, 2020.

For those unfamiliar with media consumption studies, it helps to think of these categories as physical devices. "Digital" includes time spent on a computer or mobile device, and "TV" includes time spent watching a television. If Netflix is watched on a TV, it's in the TV category. If it's watched on a computer, it's in the "digital" category. Social media, web, and mobile web all fall into that "digital" category. Additionally, these types of studies recognize that people often do two things at once - for example, someone may scroll through their phone while watching television. In these instances, both of these activities count equally in terms of the analysis. In other words, media engagement is often non-exclusive.

During the stay-at-home time period, people in the United States are spending nearly eight hours each day online. That is a big increase from the 6.45 hours people spent online prior to the pandemic. But consider that perhaps 6.45 hours online is a lot of time online as well! It's no wonder that digital engagement is so important right now - and also that it was so important prior to the pandemic.

The importance of digital engagement amongst likely visitors to cultural organizations has been increasing over the last few years - long before the arrival of the coronavirus. The web, mobile web, and social media are primary sources of information for likely visitors. Not only that, inactive visitors - people with interest in attending cultural entities who do not attend - are even more connected to the web than current visitors.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the increased amount of time that people are spending online, digital platforms have become even more important sources of information for likely visitors to cultural organizations. The data below is from the National Awareness, Attitudes, and Usage Study, which is now over 142,000 respondents strong. It is shown in index values, which quantify proportionality around a mean value of 100 in order to aid in understanding comparisons. For example, social media is a 17x greater go-to source of information than a printed newspaper right now. (If it's the newspaper online on a computer, it's in the "web" category. If it's the newspaper on a mobile device, it's in the "mobile web" category.) Social media is also a staggering 324x more important source of information for likely visitors (both active and inactive) than direct mail. "WOM" stands for "word of mouth," and you can read more about this metric and the information sources here.

As a note, this is not intended to provide a direct map for the allocation of engagement resources. The point here is that digital engagement was important before COVID-19, and it's even more important now.

Digital engagement is important. Period. While we know that it played an important role in motivating attendance before the pandemic, we'll also be collecting information and will share more as we are able to assess how digital expectations may have changed (and if their impact on attendance has increased) as entities reopen.

2) Understanding core constituents

Thank goodness that topics related to market research, audience research, and evaluation were having a moment at conferences in recent years! Understanding and motivating your cultural organization's active visitors may be more important than ever before upon reopening. If your entity put in the work to understand your audiences prior to COVID-19, it's likely to make re-engagement more effective and efficient.

In IMPACTS data terms, "active visitors" (also called "historic visitors") are the people who actively visit cultural organizations. They are the people who actually come in the door, and - thankfully, at the moment - they are the audiences cultural entities tend to know the most about. These audiences differ from inactive visitors (who have interest but don't attend), unlikely visitors (not interested, but will attend if required), and non-visitors (not interested, unlikely to attend).

Active visitors are the people who like you. They're also the people who miss you most right now, as attending your organization was regular behavior for them. While an active visitor is anyone who has visited you within the last two years, this audience also includes members and subscribers, as well as other evangelists for your institution.

If your organization will have limited capacity, it may be important to make sure each person in the door counts as much as possible from a revenue and/or endorsement perspective. Active visitors - and members and subscribers in particular - may be your lowest hanging fruit in 2020, and your most efficient pathway to recovery. After all, they are the people who like you, are more likely to return, and are more likely to endorse your organization which motivates additional attendance.

Active visitors also cost the least to engage. One of my colleagues at IMPACTS describes the kind of data shown below as "quantifying common sense." While many may suspect that people with a higher propensity to visit cost less to engage, here's the math. Indeed, in this time of uncertainty, even "common sense" deserves to be quantified.

The data below indicates the year 2019 average costs to engage active, inactive, unlikely, and non-visitor profile cohorts to eleven cultural organizations in the United States with a $20 or greater adult general admission cost. For the purpose of this analysis, only organizations with an admission basis were included in the study. While each organization's specific adult admission price did vary, and so did the respective audience acquisition budgets of the contemplated organizations, the findings were consistent: In terms of audience acquisition costs, active visitors are significantly more efficient target audiences than non-visitors.

It is more than 4.5x more expensive to engage someone who profiles as a non-visitor than someone who profiles as an active visitor. This is a huge difference! And remember that unlikely and non-visitors are identified by their lack of interest in attending in the first place. People who profile as non-visitors, in particular, are also more likely to have a negative onsite experience, which may lead to negative word of mouth that could further risk market potential.

On the whole, being a white, non-Hispanic individual is currently (and problematically) the most-shared attribute of a visitor to a cultural institution. Inactive visitors (who have interest but do not visit yet) are generally more diverse from an age and ethnicity perspective. Prior to COVID-19, an important goal for cultural institutions was to activate inactive visitors to change up the "type of person" who attends. (This is still true! For some entities, however, surviving may be the most important goal of all at the moment, precisely so that an entity may more quickly return to serving the masses and investing in new audiences.)

Maybe your organization was successful in engaging more diverse audiences prior to the pandemic and they are already included in your active visitor audience, which is the most efficient to engage now. Or, maybe not. The point is: Knowing your most active and likely audiences is important. They are not only the most likely to visit when you reopen and the most efficient in terms of who to target, but they are also likely to provide positive endorsements so others will follow their lead.

3) Discounting thoughtless discounting

If your organization relied on discount strategies as a lever to generate attendance volume prior to COVID-19, recovery is likely to be more difficult. And it may be worse if you keep at it. If your organization has limited capacity and resources are finite, making every dollar count matters.

We understand the emotions feeding the popular cognitive bias that offering a discount is the same as being welcoming. But being free or discounted is not the same as being welcoming.

Offering discounts to cultural experiences has always run counter to behavioral economics. Discounts to cultural experiences do not attract new audiences, and people who enter cultural organizations on discount often indicate worse experiences than people who pay full price. Perhaps most importantly, the people who redeem untargeted discounts or attend free days tend to have higher household incomes than those who attend on regular full-admission days. (Spoiler alert: The cultural industry's biggest barrier is being perceived as worthy of someone's time, not money. When a discount is offered, it's most often the people who already know the experience is worthy of their time who take advantage of the deal. This tends to be the people who would otherwise be willing to pay full price for the experience.)

Consistent discounting can also lead to an unsustainable cycle wherein people wait for steeper and steeper discounts before visiting again. Having "trained" audiences to await discounts is a particular barrier to engagement for some organizations. Also consider that the average person visits a cultural institution once every 27 months. You can see the range for your organization type here. The attendance bump upon discounting is often the result of accelerating a visit... but then it takes 27 months - or another, steeper discount - to get them to return. In other words, that attendance bump often is not new people visiting. It's simply an organization artificially moving many people to the same visitor engagement cycle timeline.

Moreover, people who attend cultural organizations are still reporting that cultural entities provide consistent value for cost, even during the pandemic time period. The data below contemplates an average of 1,843 adult visitors to cultural organizations for each indicated time period. Value for cost is a measure of how much value one perceives based on an admission price. (Don't be fooled. Higher admission prices do not generally correlate with lower value for cost scores. And even free organizations can have low value for cost, implying that people did not think the experience was valuable relative to the time and effort to attend.) Instead, this is a measure of if something is broadly perceived as being worth paying for.

To clarify, those surveyed during the months of March 2020 and April 2020 had not necessarily just visited a cultural institution. Cultural institutions were generally closed across the United States for most of these months. Instead, they were responding based on their perceptions of the value for cost, based either on their most recent visit or their knowledge of the price. Negative or declining value for cost perceptions are an indicator of a "value disadvantaged" condition - the price represents a significant barrier to entry.

Instead, we are generally observing relatively stable value-for-cost perceptions. This is encouraging - particularly as we confront a likely capacity-constrained future where there may be a need to maximize the value of every onsite visitor in order to survive and invest in access programs.

There can be valid, compelling reasons to support a special and targeted promotional pricing strategy - generally these types of promotions seek to attract new or emerging audiences. But a special price may not prove necessary for active constituents. In the end, an organization's pricing strategy should be responsive to its engagement strategy - one size generally doesn't fit all.

This article will hit organizations differently. Some leaders may be nodding along, grateful that they saw the writing on the wall in terms of understanding audiences, glad to have made prior investments in a strong foundation for social media and digital engagement, and having deployed thoughtful pricing strategies over the years. But some may have the opposite reaction. They may be concerned because digital engagement was an afterthought prior to the pandemic, engagement strategies were generally untargeted, and discounts were considered an automatic "cure-all" for engagement. Right now, while many entities are still closed and strategizing about the future, cultural organizations have an opportunity to address these areas - identifying where the foundations are strong but also where they may need to be shored up.

It's a time for moving forward thoughtfully. Thankfully, it's also a time of data, of learning, and of coming together.

To that end, we'll see you back here on Monday with updated data on intentions to visit.
Here are the COVID-19 data insights for cultural entities that we've published thus far. Don't want to miss an update? Subscribe here to get the most recent data and analysis in your inbox.

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Exposed by COVID-19: Three Cracks in Cultural Entity Operations to Repair for Reopening (DATA) - Colleen Dilenschneider

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COVID-19 is likely to exacerbate these three potential weak spots for cultural organizations. Here's intel to identify and tackle them as soon as possible. You don't need to spend much time on a news website to spot an article aboutRead More ›

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As we develop strategies and protocols that will allow us to safely reopen our museums, we’re faced with a glut of new challenges to consider: How can we welcome members and visitors back? Will we have to limit our visitor capacity? Will our teams feel safe about returning and restarting?

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In a time of change, much of it urgent and involuntary, there might be a chance to shift deep-seated "team norms" for a more effective, purpose-driven workplace. Photo credit: Gia Oris on Unsplash.

As we develop strategies and protocols that will allow us to safely reopen our museums, we're faced with a glut of new challenges to consider: How can we welcome members and visitors back? Will we have to limit our visitor capacity? Will our teams feel safe about returning and restarting? These are just a few of many questions, and it feels like all of them need to be answered at once.

However, it is equally critical at this time to step back and take stock of the deeper questions: What are our key strengths, the foundations of our mission? What are we as a museum, if not a manifestation of the people who make up our team? If you agree that employees, staff, or teammates-whatever your word for those you work with-are fundamental to what kind of organization you lead, then I would suggest that's a pretty important place to start as we prepare for post-pandemic operations.

How do we rebuild our teams after such a wrenching experience? Is this your opportunity to shift behaviors, whether to be more productive and effective or even just to bring more joy and sense of purpose into your work? I would suggest that this is a time for a "change movement" to begin. And it should start with your senior leadership team, whose influence sets the tone for all others, as research into change movements supports.

So, where do we start? How can we be thoughtful in our return to the office, chart a new course for our museum, and achieve a new and productive relationship with our team?

I'm a big fan of mental models, especially when I'm trying to assess a situation and take action appropriate to the circumstances. A simple model in this case is to think about team norms. As business journalist Charles Duhigg writes in his book Smarter, Better, Faster, data indicates that if everyone on a team feels they have a voice in the matters at hand, they will collectively be more productive. Here is a simple checklist of the team norms that support this:

Teams need to believe that their work is important

Teams need to feel their work is personally meaningful

Teams need clear goals and defined roles

Team members need to know they can depend on each other

Teams need psychological safety

Some of us have a natural awareness of these norms and their impact on positive team environments. But if you are like me, and too often focused on the museum's strategy and path ahead, you might need a reminder to consider them, like a simple list posted in your meeting rooms.

For leaders, there are two general principles to uphold to support these norms:

1. Everyone needs to feel they can speak up.

2. Team members need to show they are sensitive to one another's feelings.

Generally, this means that...

All team members:

Avoid interrupting each other

Listen and summarize what they are hearing

Admit when they don't know something

And leaders:

Don't end a meeting until everyone has spoken

Encourage those who are frustrated to express their concerns

Call out intergroup conflicts and resolve them through open discussion

Now, let's take a closer look at each of those norms on the checklist, to consider how leaders can support and motivate their teams so that cultural, social, and strategic change can truly become a movement.

Teams Need to Believe Their Work Is Important

This starts with mission. In museums, our focus on social change for positive impact in education, learning, self-confidence, innovation, and creativity is pretty exciting stuff. With such a great foundation to build from, why do our efforts to work towards these ends sometimes devolve into frustration and broken working relationships?

Much of this discontent arises from a perceived lack of control. Cognitive science and neurological research have shown us that the need for control is, as Duhigg notes, "a biological imperative." "When people believe they are in control," he writes, "they tend to work harder and push themselves more. They are, on average, more confident and overcome setbacks faster." And the way to feel more in control is to have decision-making power.

So, while we may have strong, shared affinities to our mission and the importance of our work, our motivation to fulfill that work is predicated on the ability to make decisions and have control. If a member of your team feels that they have no control to contribute to decisions (and likely perceive their leader to be micromanaging them), they may be less likely to believe their work and their contribution is important.

Teams Need to Feel Their Work is Personally Meaningful

Alignment with mission and confidence in decision-making are not enough on their own. Our team members all have personal reasons why they chose to work in our museums, which is another reason why it is important to remind everyone of their contributions to your purpose or mission. In his book Creativity Inc., Ed Catmull, the co-founder of Pixar, writes about the studio's success:

"We acknowledge we will always have problems, many of them hidden from our view; that we work hard to uncover these problems, even if doing do means making ourselves uncomfortable; and that, when we come across a problem, we marshal all of our energies to solve it. This more than any elaborate party or turreted workstation, is why I love coming to work in the morning. It is what motivates me and gives me a sense of mission."

Do you know what personally motivates each member of your team? What aspects of the job provide deep meaning and purpose to each of them? Without some understanding of their sense of personal meaning, you may not be reaching their best self. Now is a fabulous time to engage them in this dialogue.

Teams Need Clear Goals and Defined Roles

Our work in museums is so highly integrated that often the boundaries of roles and decision-making blur. Having the operations director add their perspective to a marketing campaign can be a healthy part of the flow of ideas, and something that should be encouraged. But at the core, we have annual priorities and projects that need to be achieved, and there is nothing worse than when senior leaders agree on those priorities but haven't worked through who will be responsible for which aspect of each, and how the decision-making will be made clear to everyone working on them.

Being clear on the organization's goals and who is leading what may seem straightforward, but it can be anything but in a creative organization. Furthermore, we all know how those goals, plans, and priorities can change throughout the year based on the environmental context in which we work. So regular updates and measures of progress are essential.

In short, don't assume that a job title infers accountability. Take the time to work through roles in detail, particularly in complex situations where the micro-priorities can shift daily. For example, as we reopen our museums, we'll need to assign responsibility for prime directives like safety for our guests (perhaps your director of operations), as well as ensure a welcoming guest experience (perhaps your director of visitor services). These directors may have different agendas, but their goals are the same. Role clarity will help them work through the potential conflict, and reduce the escalation of operating issues to the senior management meeting.

Team Members Need to Know They Can Depend On Each Other

There is a lot packed into this team norm. Ed Catmull of Pixar touches on a number of elements in a leader's role to creating an environment of trust and dependency:

"There are many valid reasons why people aren't candid with one another in a work environment. Your job [as their leader] is to search for those reasons and then address them."

"Your [museum's] communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody."

"Many managers feel that if they are not notified about problems before others are, or if they are surprised in a meeting, then this is a sign of disrespect. Get over it."

As a leader, you play a huge role in supporting intra-team dynamics, and equally in curbing unbalanced behaviors that can undermine this sense of trust. However, it is not your role to prevent risks; it is imperative that you make it safe for risks to be taken. Fear of failure is so often the grit in the gears of a team's effective relations. As Catmull says, "Failure isn't a necessary evil. In fact, it isn't evil at all. It is a necessary consequence of doing something new." With this as a shared perspective, and as you lead them through many experiences both good and bad, your team members can learn to depend on each other.

Teams Need Psychological Safety

Duhigg frames this as the most important of all these team norms. People will not share their ideas and trust will not grow in a working environment that is not psychologically safe. Members of your team should feel able to fight for what they believe in, but to do so with respect, maintaining an openness to other options, and with an understanding that they are supported by their peers even if they disagree.

Leaders need to model the behaviors that generate this kind of psychological safety. These can be subtle actions like not interrupting in a meeting, being sensitive to a team member who is clearly upset, and supporting productive arguments about problems-not about people.

Overall, people need to feel (a) that they have an equal voice in the collective work that we do (even if their idea doesn't make the cut), and (b) that members show they are sensitive to how the others feel.

Our museums will not go back to "normal" after this crisis any more than our society as a whole will. With the high trust the public continues to put in museums, we have an opportunity to lead the way toward positive community change, at a time when our society is floundering with new realities of behavior and trust.

To meet this opportunity, as a leader in your museum, especially at this time of intense change and uncertainty, remember to focus on your team. As Duhigg asks: "Are you encouraging equality in speaking, or rewarding the loudest people? Are you modeling great listening? Are you demonstrating a sensitivity to what people think and feel, or are you letting decisive leadership be an excuse for not paying as close attention as you should?" When everyone on your team is actively supporting each other towards the museum's next iteration, you'll know as their leader that they also have your back.

About the author:

Jennifer Martin is the founding, now former CEO of TELUS Spark in Calgary, Alberta. She started as an exhibit and program developer at Science North, and spent over twenty years in successive roles at the Ontario Science Centre. Jennifer now assists museum CEOs and their teams with major change initiatives and capital projects.

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As we develop strategies and protocols that will allow us to safely reopen our museums, we're faced with a glut of new challenges to consider: How can we welcome members and visitors back? Will we have to limit our visitor capacity? Will our teams feel safe about returning and restarting?

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For A-bomb survivors, pandemic silences decades of storytelling

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For A-bomb survivors, pandemic silences decades of storytelling

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April and May are usually busy months for Hiroshi Harada, 80, who for decades has been telling his tale of surviving an atomic bombing to schoolchildren, hoping to preserve the devastation he witnessed in people's collective memory.

But this year, the pandemic has upended that routine for Harada and other atomic-bomb survivors.

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HIROSHIMA -- April and May are usually busy months for Hiroshi Harada, 80, who for decades has been telling his tale of surviving an atomic bombing to schoolchildren, hoping to preserve the devastation he witnessed in people's collective memory.

But this year, the pandemic has upended that routine for Harada and other atomic-bomb survivors.

Even as the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki approaches this summer, concerns about the coronavirus have forced schools around the nation to cancel class trips to the two cities.

"This is usually a busy time for us," said Harada. "I've never seen anything like this."

Harada, a former director of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, was 6 years old when the U.S. B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped the bomb on Aug. 6, 1945. He was inside Hiroshima Station, 2 km away from ground zero, that morning, and the sturdy structure protected him from a direct hit from the blast.

He was scheduled to give his testimonial to students and foreign tourists 15 or so times in April and again in May. Each event was either canceled or pushed back. As of May 25, more than 700 testimonials by survivors at the museum and elsewhere had been canceled or postponed.

"The 75th anniversary of the end of the war was an opportunity to capture the interest of many people," Harada said. "I'm totally disappointed."

The museum has been shut down since the end of February, with plans to reopen it June 1.

The museum welcomed 4,597 tour groups in the fiscal year ended March. Among them were 324,653 elementary to high schoolers on class trips. But in 2020, more than 100 group tours have been cancelled or postponed.

Sixth graders from Kokumei Elementary School in suburban Osaka planned to visit the museum in late May but now intend to go in early September. The school's plan is to have sixth graders share with younger students the testimonials they heard from survivors of the Hiroshima blast.

"I want to protect a learning opportunity, but I don't know what would happen if a second wave of infections occurs," Kokumei's principal said.

The average age of survivors has pushed past 82. "I wish for the [coronavirus pandemic] to end as quickly as possible so that we can start telling our personal stories to as many people as possible," Harada said.

As an alternative, the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation, which runs the peace museum, has been streaming survivors' testimonials since March 27.

Videos of 34 survivors have been recorded at the museum since the spring of 2019 in a project to preserve the oral history for the next generation. The original plan was to play them on-site and elsewhere, but the pandemic pushed the foundation into streaming.

Nagasaki's atomic bomb museum has been closed since April 10 but is scheduled to reopen June 1 following the lifting of the state of emergency. But "because we were shut down during the school trip season, children lost an opportunity to learn," a museum representative said.

The Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Survivors Council canceled all of the 100 or so lectures by survivors that it had scheduled through July.

"The victims are aging, so we can't simply say 'next year,'" said Fumie Kakita, secretary-general.

Okinawa will significantly scale back this year's June 23 memorial ceremony for those killed in the Battle of Okinawa. The Himeyuri Peace Museum, set to reopen June 1, has seen about 380 school trips postponed or canceled between March and June.
Additional reporting by Aya Takahashi and Hiroshi Asahina.

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For A-bomb survivors, pandemic silences decades of storytelling

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HIROSHIMA -- April and May are usually busy months for Hiroshi Harada, 80, who for decades has been telling his tale of surviving an atomic bombing to schoolchildren, hoping to preserve the devastation he witnessed in people's collective memory. But this year, the pandemic has upended that routine for Harada and other atomic-bomb survivors.

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After Covid-19, museums need to plan ‘must see’ exhibitions instead of blockbusters

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After Covid-19, museums need to plan ‘must see’ exhibitions instead of blockbusters

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The Brooklyn Museum’s director of exhibitions explains how institutions can rethink their offerings going forward

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Many museums around the globe are temporarily closed. Exhibitions are being cancelled and postponed. Budgets are being slashed. Earned income is in doubt. Philanthropy is in question. How do we conceptualise and organise exhibitions in our changed world?

Over the years, the blockbuster has been frequently called into question, and with good reason. Do these shows really serve our audiences or do they just pander to the crowd in order to attract large numbers of visitors? The motivation for, and sustained presence of, the blockbuster exhibition has derived from two primary urges: first, to deliver invigorating and uplifting experiences and ideas through great works of art, and second, to draw audiences to generate revenue. These drivers will remain in our new reality, and, in fact, they will be more urgent than ever.

Going forward, we need to reimagine and adapt blockbuster exhibitions, thinking instead of creating "must see" exhibitions. At the Brooklyn Museum under Anne Pasternak's leadership, we have focused our thinking around this concept, presenting shows that offer unique and desired experiences, while also advancing our mission, especially in a city with many incredible cultural offerings. While still focused on generating revenue, this approach shifts the emphasis from attendance numbers (the block busting) to visitors' needs and interests. What do they want to see? What will excite them? What will compel them to feel like they have to see something exceptional and special? We have developed criteria to help us evaluate proposals, leading always with how an idea connects to our mission-"to create inspiring encounters with art that expand the ways we see ourselves, the world and its possibilities"-and a matrix that considers the overall costs and staff investment relative to the attendance and visibility impact we anticipate to ensure our shows are on track with this strategy.

Museum audiences will continue to crave experiences that motivate the "blockbuster" show-a desire to learn, to be inspired, and, yes, also to have fun. As Attract Research's recent study of New York City residents who attend museums at least once a year demonstrated, museum-going audiences strongly intend to return within the coming months, even while remaining concerned about feeling comfortable in large, public spaces. As such, we anticipate that visitors will continue to seek dynamic art experiences, even if those experiences are different from pre-COVID ones.

The second motivator in creating "blockbuster" exhibitions will be, unfortunately, a continued reality for most museums. Many museums have historically staged these shows due to historical and structural financial gaps. In the COVID and post-COVID world, museums will face even greater reductions in contributed income and earned revenue. As a result, nearly all will need to rethink their operating models to fill increasingly large gaps between revenue and spending as philanthropy alone cannot match the costs of operation.

While audiences often have strong ties to the collections at their local museums, most visitors seek out the new experiences and ideas more commonly found in special exhibitions. With international and even domestic travel limited, museum audiences are likely to become hyperlocal with increased appetites for engaging, dynamic experiences in their backyards. In order for museums to continue to generate earned revenue, they will need to continue to offer new, compelling reasons to visit, and to return, even if the overall attendance numbers will be lower due to safety protocols and physical distancing guidelines.

Even before COVID, the Brooklyn Museum developed a new model for exhibitions, beginning with the premise that high organisational costs, which have often characterised blockbuster exhibitions, are not necessarily required to achieve "must see" excitement. We have accomplished this consistently by drawing on our collections, presenting bodies of work from a single source, and/or collaborating with partner institutions. As major international loan exhibitions are being cancelled, especially those with multiple lenders, high insurance costs, and complex shipping and logistical concerns, keys to future success may include single-lender collection presentations (or at least fewer lenders), incoming traveling exhibitions, thought-provoking collection activations, and contemporary artist projects. These approaches minimise the overall costs, ultimately yielding a higher return on investment. Perhaps most importantly, they also reduce the carbon-footprint of exhibitions.

Museums like the Brooklyn Museum that have depths of collections can also travel their collections to create must-see urgency elsewhere, allowing them to broaden their mission, and to reach audiences who may not have the means or access to such masterworks. It also offers opportunities to share objects from storage, create partnerships with other institutions, and see some modest financial return for organising the shows. Hosting institutions are able to offer their audiences new work to see, while incurring relatively low risks and costs with a single lender/organiser. While travelling exhibitions involve a trade-off for the organising museum (and its audiences) with the absence of those works for a period of time, perhaps it is even more necessary now as a service to the field to share our collections.

This current pandemic offers an opportunity for an exhibitions reset-a moment to rethink how we can continue to serve our audiences while also continuing to generate revenue to keep our doors open. We have an opportunity to reimagine different exhibition models, while still providing similar motivators that originally drove the blockbuster trend. Those who cherish visiting museums will want to return to a sense of normalcy, and to return to their local museums once again. Their favourite collections, along with the must-see exhibitions that often drive their visits, will be there waiting for them.
* Sharon Matt Atkins is the director of exhibitions and strategic initiatives at the Brooklyn Museum

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After Covid-19, museums need to plan 'must see' exhibitions instead of blockbusters

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Many museums around the globe are temporarily closed. Exhibitions are being cancelled and postponed. Budgets are being slashed. Earned income is in doubt. Philanthropy is in question. How do we conceptualise and organise exhibitions in our changed world? Over the years, the blockbuster has been frequently called into question, and with good reason.

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European museums must adapt to survive, says report

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European museums must adapt to survive, says report

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After surveying nearly 1,000 museums from 48 countries on the impact of the pandemic, Nemo is calling for ongoing government support for museum operations, an increased focus on digital cultural heritage and new measures to make the sector “fit for crises”.

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The Network of European Museum Organisations calls for ongoing government support, more digital investment and new measures to weather "future storms"

Museums need to rethink the way they work to adapt to a "new normal" following the coronavirus pandemic, says a report from the Network of European Museum Organisations (Nemo).

After surveying nearly 1,000 museums from 48 countries on the impact of the pandemic, Nemo is calling for ongoing government support for museum operations, an increased focus on digital cultural heritage and new measures to make the sector "fit for crises".

The organisation says: "There is no fast-track back to normal - rather than making a return to normal our goal, we must learn from this crisis in order to effectively respond, mitigate, adapt and integrate."

It says its recommendations form part of a more widespread sentiment that "our systems require review and restructuring in order to weather future storms".

The latest results are from a survey carried out between 24 March and 30 April. This found that 93% of museums were closed, though many in Europe planned to reopen in May and June. Over half of those responding were losing more than €1,000 a week, and about a quarter were losing more than €30,000 a week.

Large museums such as Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum and Stedelijk Museum, and the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna, are losing between €100,000 and €600,000 a week.

And museums in tourist regions are expecting income losses of 75-80% because of the standstill in tourism and the possible continuation of lockdown restrictions into summer, says the report.

While a majority of museums have not laid off staff, about 25% said they expected to do so in the long term. Three in 10 have put freelance contracts on hold, and about 60% have completely stopped their volunteer programmes.

There has been a significant increase in online work, with 80% of respondents changing staff tasks to increase their digital capability.

The report calls on European, national, regional and local bodies to provide financial support to museums to guarantee staff salaries, ensure core activities continue, and engage audiences with collections.

It urges governments to continue financial support once the immediate crisis has passed to help museums address an expected drop in tourism and new health and security measures.

Nemo also says sector stakeholders should acknowledge the growing importance of digital cultural heritage by investing in digital services and infrastructures. It calls for "harmonised metrics to measure online visits" and "fun, engaging and creative" digital content that can compete with other online offerings.

The report adds that the sector and society should become better prepared for crises, including developing emergency plans. It urges governments to support museums with adequate health and safety measures, and says the sector should consider adopting more permanently the flexible working approaches that have emerged in response to the crisis.

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European museums must adapt to survive, says report | Museums Association

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The Network of European Museum Organisations calls for ongoing government support, more digital investment and new measures to weather "future storms" Museums need to rethink the way they work to adapt to a "new normal" following the coronavirus pandemic, says a report from the Network of European Museum Organisations (Nemo).

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Les musées planchent sur l’après-coronavirus

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Les musées planchent sur l’après-coronavirus

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Baisse des subventions et de la fréquentation, ralentissement de la programmation, l’avenir s’annonce sombre pour les musées, petits et grands. Pourtant, certains voient dans la crise actuelle l’opportunité de renouer avec leurs collections et de tisser un lien différent avec le public.

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Le robot-vidéo téléguidé du Louvre-Lens.

© Photo F. Iovino.

France. " Il faut fonder le concept de progrès sur l'idée de la catastrophe. Que "les choses continuent comme avant", voilà la catastrophe ", a pu écrire en un autre temps Walter Benjamin. De fait, après deux mois de confinement, les musées ne voient pas comment les choses pourraient redevenir " comme avant ". Depuis plusieurs jours, Sébastien Delot, directeur du LaM à Villeneuve-d'Ascq (Nord), étudie avec ses équipes comment combiner les flux de visiteurs et le respect des consignes sanitaires. Dissocier l'entrée de la sortie, dessiner des marquages au sol, distribuer des masques..., toutes les mesures de précaution sont étudiées, jusqu'aux plus inattendues - faut-il ou non débrancher le distributeur automatique de café dans les espaces d'accueil ?

Repenser le lien avec les scolaires

À Orléans, la directrice des Musées de la Ville, Olivia Voisin, travaille elle aussi à l'accueil du public, au travers de visites individuelles sur réservation. Compte tenu de la contagiosité du Covid-19, hors de question de s'attrouper devant le bâtiment, encore moins d'accueillir des groupes, à commencer par les scolaires. Ne faut-il pas alors déplacer le musée à l'école ? " Les œuvres ne peuvent pas sortir du musée, rappelle Olivia Voisin. Mais, certaines pièces étant moins fragiles que d'autres, nous pourrions imaginer des caisses sécurisées transportables dans les classes. "

À la pointe sur le sujet de la médiation, le Louvre-Lens (Pas-de-Calais) projette d'ores et déjà d'étendre aux scolaires ses visites à distance, grâce à son robot-vidéo téléguidé. Expérimenté avec succès auprès des personnes hospitalisées, ce dispositif pourrait permettre aux enfants de " déambuler ", accompagnés d'un médiateur, dans la galerie du Temps, sans avoir à venir au musée.

De fait, l'enjeu pour les musées est aujourd'hui de maîtriser les flux sans rompre le lien avec leurs publics français et étrangers. En cela, le numérique est apparu pendant le confinement comme une alternative. " Le musée est temporairement fermé. Restons en contact sur les réseaux sociaux Instagram, Twitter et Facebook ", pouvait-on lire sur la page d'accueil du site Internet du Musée des beaux-arts de Lyon. Résultat, les musées ont vu leur fréquentation numérique exploser. " Le Louvre.fr a gagné 7 millions de nouveaux visiteurs en quatre semaines. C'est incroyable ! ", se réjouit Dominique de Font-Réaulx, directrice de la médiation et de la programmation culturelle au Louvre. Incroyable en effet, pour ne pas dire miraculeux, tant les musées accusaient du retard en la matière.

Coloriages et jeux des 7 erreurs sur le site du musée de Lyon, atelier de sculpture sur pomme de terre (" patat'Arp ") sur celui du Musée d'art moderne et contemporain de Saint-Étienne Métropole, kit pour concevoir un jeu d' " escape room " associé à l'exposition " Jean Ranc " fourni par le Musée Fabre à Montpellier, sans oublier les traditionnelles visites virtuelles et la mise en ligne des conférences : les institutions ont réussi à bricoler en quelques jours une offre culturelle qui les a propulsées dans les foyers. C'est le paradoxe : " Beaucoup de gens ont découvert le musée pendant le confinement. À nous d'être intelligents et inventifs pour les garder ", enchérit Dominique de Font-Réaulx, qui livre quelques pistes : " Augmenter l'offre de contenu par rapport à l'information "pratique", intégrer plus de récits, etc. "

L'" expérience visiteur " au centre du musée

Mais cela ne risque-t-il pas d'éloigner un peu plus le public des œuvres ? " La rencontre physique avec l'œuvre reste magique ", assure Marie Lavandier, qui perçoit au contraire, dans les messages laissés sur les réseaux sociaux, " un besoin de venir au musée "." Le numérique est aussi un moyen de susciter l'envie ", affirme la directrice du Louvre-Lens. C'est d'ailleurs l'une des pistes qu'elle souhaite explorer : développer l'expérience du visiteur. " La course aux chiffres de fréquentation va connaître un coup d'arrêt. Nous allons devoir revenir à une vision plus individuelle de l'art, plus proche de la vie de chacun. " L'art contemporain, fondé sur le rapport du visiteur à l'œuvre, pourrait donc y trouver son compte, comme le développement du " hors les murs " qui permettrait d'aller à la rencontre du public. " Pourquoi ne pas imaginer des "expositions" chez l'habitant, dans les appartements ? ", s'interroge Marie Lavandier.

De même, Olivia Voisin voit dans la crise déclenchée par le Covid-19 l'opportunité pour le musée de remettre sa mission patrimoniale au centre de ses activités. " L'énergie et le temps consacrés aux expositions temporaires nous a détournés, conservateurs, élus et public, de nos collections ", estime la directrice des musées orléanais. Et de souligner quelques non-sens : à Paris, une exposition " Vermeer " a pu enregistrer près de 325 000 visiteurs en l'espace de trois mois, " alors que la salle du peintre au Louvre reste vide une fois les tableaux revenus à leur place "." Le public plébiscite les expositions temporaires, mais délaisse les collections ", poursuit la directrice d'Orléans. " Il ne faudrait pour autant pas renoncer à ces expositions, tempère Christophe Leribault, directeur du Petit Palais à Paris. Les blockbusters permettent à des visiteurs qui ne viendraient pas autrement de venir au musée. Il faut veiller à ne pas rester dans un entre-soi. "

La fin des blockbusters ?

Les grandes expositions ont-elles du plomb dans l'aile ? D'après Marie Lavandier, qui doit reporter son exposition " Les Louvre de Picasso " d'un an, " on mettra à l'avenir davantage en rapport le coût et la durée d'une exposition avec le nombre de visiteurs susceptibles de la voir ". Car, sans parler du ralentissement du transport aérien qui va pénaliser les mouvements d'œuvres et le déplacement des touristes étrangers, la facture du Covid-19 s'annonce élevée. Les moyens des musées, qu'ils soient nationaux, municipaux, privés ou associatifs, n'échapperont pas aux coupes budgétaires. " On ne pourra plus concevoir d'expositions avec une scénographie venue d'Italie, un verre fabriqué en Tchéquie... ", prédit Dominique de Font-Réaulx.

L'économiste Jean-Michel Tobelem va plus loin : " Pourquoi faire ces expositions quand on laisse dormir les œuvres dans les réserves ? " Pour le directeur de l'institut de recherche Option Culture, la situation actuelle est l'occasion de changer un système qui a atteint ses limites. " La crise des musées préexistait à la crise du coronavirus. Il existe, en France, un système à deux vitesses, avec d'un côté une concentration des richesses et du public dans les grandes institutions parisiennes et, de l'autre, une paupérisation des musées en province. Cela n'est plus acceptable : personne ne peut suivre l'intégralité de l'offre parisienne alors que, dans le même temps, les musées des grandes métropoles françaises ne peuvent plus organiser d'expositions internationales. " Le retour à une économie plus " frugale " serait donc une opportunité pour la démocratisation culturelle comme pour les collections nationales, qui pourraient mieux circuler entre les musées.

Si l'analyse est juste, la réalité est plus nuancée. Les musées d'Orsay et du Louvre sont redevenus des partenaires de choix pour les institutions en régions, et la solidarité entre les musées fonctionne. Nombre d'institutions parisiennes, à l'instar du Petit Palais, ont également revu leur programmation dans le bon sens. " Nous faisons en sorte qu'il y ait toujours quelque chose à voir au musée ", explique Christophe Leribault, qui mise sur des expositions à la fois plus " durables " et plus exigeantes, comme sur la valorisation des collections permanentes (40 % d'œuvres exposées en plus dans des salles entièrement repeintes). Et peut-être faut-il s'en féliciter car, une fois la pandémie terminée, rien ne dit que les choses ne continuent pas " comme avant ". " Je ne sais pas si, passé les difficultés des prochains mois, les musées ne reviendront pas à leurs vieilles habitudes... ", se demande Christophe Leribault.

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Les musées planchent sur l'après-coronavirus - 6 mai 2020 - Le Journal des Arts - n° 545

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Baisse des subventions et de la fréquentation, ralentissement de la programmation, l'avenir s'annonce sombre pour les musées, petits et grands. Pourtant, certains voient dans la crise actuelle l'opportunité de renouer avec leurs collections et de tisser un lien différent avec le public.

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No Touch, No Hands-On Learning, for Now, as Museums Try to Reopen

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No Touch, No Hands-On Learning, for Now, as Museums Try to Reopen

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Science and children’s museums are studying how to rethink their many tactile exhibits to keep people safe.

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No Touch, No Hands-On Learning, for Now, as Museums Try to Reopen

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"I'm personally very reluctant to touch things in public right now," said Ellen Stofan, the director of the Air and Space Museum. "And if we can't find a way to do it safely, we're not going to do it at all." "If we can't be hands-on, can we be feet-on?"

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Nel lockdown musei più social, ma solo uno su quattro ha un piano digitale

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Nel lockdown musei più social, ma solo uno su quattro ha un piano digitale

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La ricerca dell'Osservatorio innovazione Digitale nei beni e attività Culturali del Politecnico di Milano ha analizzato 430 enti verificando che il 51% dei musei non ha wi-fi e solo il 23% ha il ticketing online, sebbene l’85% ha un sito web

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Se questo è ormai vero da anni, l'esperienza del lockdown ha dato un significativo impulso alla presenza online dei musei e in parte ha dettato anche un cambiamento di marcia: "Il livello di interesse da parte per le attività online è aumentato, come si evince dall'incremento degli utenti che seguono le pagine social dei musei" dichiara Deborah Agostino, direttore dell'Osservatorio Innovazione Digitale nei Beni e Attività Culturali "Il livello di interazione, invece, per i musei rimane stabile. Nonostante l'aumento dell'attività e dei follower, non si sono mediamente osservate variazioni rispetto a quanto accadeva nelle settimane precedenti il lockdown. Questo ha delle eccezioni in corrispondenza di attività più interattive, in cui è stata richiesta esplicitamente una risposta da parte del pubblico, come l'iniziativa ArtYouReady che ha generato su Instagram un numero di interazioni più che doppio rispetto ai giorni precedenti. Nel caso dei teatri, invece, la capacità di ingaggiare il pubblico nelle settimane di chiusura è aumentata sensibilmente rispetto ai mesi precedenti, soprattutto con riferimento a Facebook, su cui il numero medio di interazioni giornaliere è cresciuto del 61%".
Dal convegno tra gli esperti, introdotto dal Dg musei del Mibact Antonio Lampis, è emerso che qualunque siano le prospettive future, la fruizione onsite ed online rappresentano non due tipi di offerta alternativi, bensì complementari ed in grado di soddisfare esigenze talvolta differenti. È dunque auspicabile un ripensamento della strategia di offerta online, che si focalizzi sul soddisfacimento dei bisogni specifici per cui l'utente dovrebbe effettuare la visita da remoto.

Le condizioni per la trasformazione
La trasformazione di un sistema complesso come quello culturale richiede innanzitutto la presa di coscienza, da parte dei policy maker e dei responsabili della gestione delle istituzioni, della necessità di un cambio di passo nei contenuti e nei modi di proporre il valore. Questa consapevolezza, negli ultimi anni sempre più diffusa, è un passo necessario ma non sufficiente. Già nel 2017 l'Osservatorio sosteneva la necessità per le istituzioni culturali di dotarsi di un piano di innovazione digitale, ossia di uno strumento che supporti il processo di trasformazione digitale, ma dall'indagine condotta tra fine 2019 e inizio 2020 emerge che la cultura della pianificazione nelle istituzioni culturali è ancora carente: solo il 24% di esse ha redatto un piano strategico dell'innovazione digitale (il 6% come documento dedicato e il 18% all'interno di un più generale piano strategico).
La trasformazione implica anche investimenti in strumenti di supporto al customer journey, sia online che onsite. Negli ultimi due anni l'83% dei musei, monumenti e aree archeologiche italiane ha investito in innovazione digitale, concentrandosi prevalentemente su servizi di supporto alla visita in loco (48%) e catalogazione e digitalizzazione della collezione (46%), attività entrambe propedeutiche a un ripensamento della value proposition sia online che onsite. Spostandosi sul futuro, le stesse voci costituiscono anche la priorità di investimento per i prossimi due anni (rispettivamente per il 33% e il 22% delle istituzioni), seguite da comunicazione e customer care (14%) e attività educative e didattiche (13%).
L'investimento in sistemi di ticketing, gestione delle prenotazioni e controllo degli accessi, invece, è stato indicato tra le priorità per il futuro solo dal 6% dei rispondenti (questo nonostante solo il 23% abbia attualmente un sistema di online ticketing), così come la digitalizzazione delle attività di sicurezza e sorveglianza. Non solo oggi l'86% dei ricavi da biglietteria deriva dalla vendita diretta in loco, ma tra i musei che hanno un sistema di controllo accessi (93%) prevale lo stacco del biglietto d'ingresso (71%), rispetto a sistemi automatizzati come lettori di codici a barre (11% su carta e 6% su display) e tornelli o varchi contapersone (7%). Eppure, l'emergenza sanitaria induce a un totale ripensamento anche degli aspetti legati alla logistica e all'organizzazione del journey dell'utente che richiederà sistemi tecnologici che consentano la prenotazione online, il contingentamento degli accessi e sistemi di sicurezza e controllo di quanto avviene all'interno dell'istituzione culturale.
Oltre i sistemi occorrono le persone competenti che facilitino la trasformazione. L'investimento sulle persone: attualmente il 51% dei musei non si avvale di nessun professionista, interno o esterno, con competenze legate al digitale. Il restante 39% dispone di competenze interne e/o ricorre a consulenti esterni per la gestione del digitale, ma solo il 12% ha un team dedicato composto da più persone.
Una competenza che sarà sempre più rilevante, anche alla luce dello spostamento del baricentro verso l'attività online, riguarda l'analisi e l'utilizzo strategico dei dati. Conoscere i clienti, le loro abitudini e esigenze, il livello di gradimento dell'esperienza vissuta sono informazioni che consentono di gestire i rischi e migliorare il servizio offerto; monitorare specifici indicatori di performance relativi alla propria organizzazione permette di migliorare la pianificazione e l'efficacia delle attività.

Le nuove possibilità per lo sviluppo dell'offerta
"Considerando che entrate da biglietteria e finanziamenti pubblici potrebbero essere impattati negativamente dalla crisi generata dall'emergenza sanitaria, da un lato a causa del contingentamento degli accessi che inciderà sul numero di biglietti staccati, dall'altro a causa dello stress sulle finanze pubbliche che potrà avere ripercussione anche sui finanziamenti per la cultura, è utile concentrare l'attenzione su fonti di ricavo alternative a queste" spiega Eleonora Lorenzini, direttore dell'Osservatorio Innovazione Digitale nei Beni e Attività Culturali.
In particolare, è interessante soffermare l'attenzione su servizi come la vendita di immagini per finalità di ricerca, riproduzione e commerciali (già offerti dal 32% dei musei) e sui servizi di abbonamento per l'accesso a servizi tramite sito web e applicazione (2%). Questi ultimi, in particolare, sono tra i modelli che ultimamente sono stati proposti per ottenere introiti legati all'attività online dei musei. Diversi esponenti dell'ecosistema culturale, infatti, hanno sostenuto la necessità di studiare forme di abbonamento o biglietto più ricche di quelle attualmente a disposizione, che contemplino l'accesso a itinerari e percorsi tematici, in cui l'integrazione online-onsite permetterà di tornare più volte al museo e accedere a contenuti sul web on demand. "Il contesto attuale si presenta particolarmente favorevole per sperimentazioni sia da parte delle istituzioni culturali che da parte del pubblico che manifesta interesse verso nuovi approcci, con preferenza verso quelli a maggior grado di interazione" conclude Eleonora Lorenzini "Sebbene non possiamo ancora sapere con certezza quanto e in che modo questo contesto muterà vista la mancanza di paradigmi di riferimento, possiamo affermare che la flessibilità, la capacità di reinventarsi e di sfruttare le potenzialità delle nuove tecnologie rispondendo alle esigenze del pubblico saranno essenziali in un futuro più prossimo di quanto ci aspettavamo".

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Nel lockdown musei più social, ma solo uno su quattro ha un piano digitale

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La ricerca dell'Osservatorio innovazione Digitale nei beni e attività Culturali del Politecnico di Milano ha analizzato 430 enti verificando che il 51% dei musei non ha wi-fi e solo il 23% ha il ticketing online, sebbene l'85% ha un sito web

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Tips and Thoughts for Museums in a COVID World

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Tips and Thoughts for Museums in a COVID World

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We’ve gathered and generated lots of ideas about how museums, zoos, and cultural institutions can respond in our COVID-19 pandemic world from our conversations with colleagues, clients, and all the online discussions.

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What Covid-19 has taught museums about the virtues of diverse funding streams

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What Covid-19 has taught museums about the virtues of diverse funding streams

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The immediate future of Norwich’s Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts has been safeguarded by its wide-ranging funding model, but even its once sacrosanct university funding may be under threat due to the coronavirus crisis.

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Coronavirus, Franceschini: Cultura ha reagito positivamente grazie a musei virtuali e digitali

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Coronavirus, Franceschini: Cultura ha reagito positivamente grazie a musei virtuali e digitali

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"La cultura ha reagito al silenzio del lockdown in maniera rapida e positiva e le istituzioni hanno accolto e rilanciato questa istanza. La crisi ha accentuato una tendenza già in essere, la digitalizzazione dei repertori e delle opere, sviluppando potenzialità finora inespresse e avvicinando tantissime persone, soprattutto giovani, al mondo della cultura".

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Amid Coronavirus lockdown, how museums are sprucing up their collections and keeping history virtually alive

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Amid Coronavirus lockdown, how museums are sprucing up their collections and keeping history virtually alive

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There is going to be a shift in tourism once the lockdown lifts, and museums and other public spaces are mulling over the changes they have to make in their functioning. Here are a few that are using the time to plan ahead and hoping to come back stronger

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This is how bad things are for museums: They now have a green light to sell off their art

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This is how bad things are for museums: They now have a green light to sell off their art

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To counter the constant temptation to regard art works as a way to get quick cash, the museum world heavily polices the sale of works from permanent collections — otherwise known as deaccessioning. The powerful Association of Art Museum Directors, made up of directors of museums in the United States, Mexico and Canada, has long frowned on any museum that sells off art for purposes other than acquiring new art. (...) However, in an unprecedented move, and as a direct result of the coronaviruspandemic, the AAMD has recently relaxed its guidelines. It’s too soon to gauge the effect, but it is already big news in the art world. Once unthinkable, the notion of selling off a Claude Monet or two to plug a budgetary hole — or to fend off a total financial meltdown — is suddenly something to contemplate.

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As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, the Association of Art Museum Directors has relaxed its guidelines regarding the sale of art works from permanent collections. (iStock)

Every major American art museum is sitting on assets that, from the outside, look enviable. They're called works of art. If they're by Vincent van Gogh or Frida Kahlo or Jackson Pollock, they may be worth tens, or even hundreds, of millions of dollars.

Even if they're by less famous artists and consigned to storage - along with perhaps 90 percent of any given museum's collection - they can still be valued at eye-watering amounts. Set beside, say, a scary budget deficit or the prospect of having to lay off employees, this knowledge can take on an almost voluptuous glow.

To counter the constant temptation to regard art works as a way to get quick cash, the museum world heavily polices the sale of works from permanent collections - otherwise known as deaccessioning. The powerful Association of Art Museum Directors, made up of directors of museums in the United States, Mexico and Canada, has long frowned on any museum that sells off art for purposes other than acquiring new art.

AAMD's frowns have an effect. Museums that dare to ignore its guidelines - as the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Mass., did in 2018, ultimately selling more than 20 works from its collection to raise money for a renovation - are censured, sanctioned and publicly shamed. For a renegade - or perhaps simply desperate - museum director, a decision to sell works from the collection, even if it's to raise money deemed necessary for survival, might mean career death.

However, in an unprecedented move, and as a direct result of the coronavirus pandemic, the AAMD has recently relaxed its guidelines. It's too soon to gauge the effect, but it is already big news in the art world. Once unthinkable, the notion of selling off a Claude Monet or two to plug a budgetary hole - or to fend off a total financial meltdown - is suddenly something to contemplate.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art spent years planning its 150th anniversary. Now the galleries are dark, the celebrations on hold.

The only problem, of course, is that once you've sold a Monet, or a Norman Rockwell, or an Albert Bierstadt, it's very hard to get it back.

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"There are many members of the association who think that this is way too much, and others who think it's way too little," Brent Benjamin, the AAMD president and the director of the Saint Louis Art Museum, told the Art Newspaper.

No one doubts that they're a sign of how bad the picture is looking for museums now.

Since mid-March, when museums began closing because of the coronavirus outbreak, income from admissions and retail has evaporated. Turmoil in financial markets has caused endowments to plummet. Fundraising has been severely constrained. And for many museums, it has quickly become a question of figuring out how to survive.

The revised guidelines touch on two areas. First, they state that any museum that "decides to use restricted endowment funds, trusts, or donations for general operating expenses" will not be censured or sanctioned. The idea here is to allow museums the financial flexibility they need in an uncertain economic environment.

The more striking announcement concerns deaccessioning. According to AAMD, museums may now "use the proceeds from deaccessioned works of art ... to support the direct care" of their collection.

The language here is careful. But there's no doubt: This represents a major departure, and a recognition that many art museums are in financial free fall.

AAMD says it recognizes "the extensive negative effects of the current crisis on the operations and balance sheets of many art museums." It acknowledges, too, the impossibility of knowing when revenue streams might return to normal.

The new guidelines are temporary, and are "not intended to incentivize ... the sale of art." But their effect may do just that.

Conscious of the significance of its about-face, AAMD has tried to look as though it is still walking calmly in the same direction. The organization's "long-standing principle" - that money raised from the sale of art from a permanent collection may not be used for general operating expenses - remains in place, according to the announcement in mid-April. Museums that choose to deaccession must maintain records of how money was raised and how it was used. They must have in place "a board-approved policy outlining what expenses it considers direct care, and the policy must be publicly accessible."

All this caution and qualification make sense. But in reality, almost any museum expense - from the salaries of curators, conservators and other staff members to costs associated with building maintenance and utilities - could conceivably fit the description of "direct care of the museum's collection."

And let's be honest: It's very theoretical. At a practical level - especially during a crisis - money inside big institutions such as art museums is fairly fungible. If a work of art is sold, the money raised is difficult to silo.

In normal times, and despite the strict guidelines, deaccessioning goes on all the time. The results can be transformative, restorative or alarming - sometimes all three at once. In 2011, for instance, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston sold eight works from its permanent collection to raise the money it needed to buy a single painting, " Man at His Bath," by Gustave Caillebotte. The paintings it auctioned off included canvases by Monet, Paul Gauguin, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

At the time, it seemed an extraordinary exchange. But after taking into account that the MFA has one of the world's greatest Impressionist collections; that most of the works it chose to sell tended to languish in storage; and that paintings by Caillebotte - an artist regarded as increasingly important - rarely come on the market, the decision began to look rational (if still controversial).

More recently, the Baltimore Museum of Art selected work by white men whose art they own in abundance - such as Andy Warhol and Franz Kline - to raise money for the acquisition of new work by underrepresented groups, especially women and African Americans, including Amy Sherald, Charles Gaines, Faith Ringgold and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

Here, too, the thinking was sound, and only mildly controversial. "I don't think it's reasonable or appropriate for a museum like the BMA to speak to a city that is 64 percent black unless we reflect our constituents," Chris Bedford, the museum's director, told Artnet in 2018.

And yet the practicalities of deaccessioning are rarely straightforward.

To begin with, there is a tension inherent in any decision by a museum to raise money by selling art. To justify selling the works, museums must play down their importance. But to get top dollar at auction, they must talk up their value.

This awkwardness can be managed. But the assumption that there are endless riches in a museum's storage rooms just waiting to be tapped is unrealistic.

In 2018, Michael O'Hare, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, argued in the San Francisco Chronicle that the Art Institute of Chicago could offer free admission in perpetuity by selling 1 percent (by value) of its collection and putting the resulting money in an endowment. The interest on the endowment alone, O'Hare said, would cover the cost.

His argument rested on dubious premises. Attempts to assign credible value to the works in a museum's permanent collection are notoriously fraught. The vast majority of the financial value of a museum's collection often resides in a very limited number of works, almost all of them on permanent display. So if a museum wants to avoid selling its most precious works, selling off 1 percent by value probably would mean selling vast amounts of art.

Logistically, that would be challenging, as Martin Gammon, the founder of Pergamon Art Group, pointed out in a 2018 response to O'Hare in the Art Newspaper. The museum probably would face lawsuits from donors who gave works with conditions attached. The market, too, may not cooperate with such a scheme.

Museums, after all, guarantee scarcity, because when they own works, it's understood that they won't come back on the market. This is a crucial factor in keeping prices high. Once undone, such a reliable assumption could trigger a market collapse. The bad publicity generated by a prestigious museum's desperate-looking fire sale also would be likely to affect prices.

Then there are the administrative costs. Deaccessioning involves time-consuming research. Museums that want to sell works have an obligation to look into restrictions and secure necessary approval from donors and their heirs. There also are costs involved in selling at auction.

So the potential gains from any kind of large-scale deaccessioning are almost invariably less than simple market valuations may suggest.

What museums need now is a combination of direct help and the flexibility to act in their own best interests. The new guidelines are an effort to provide the latter. But I believe the old principles remain sound. Even in these unprecedented circumstances, museum directors should not panic or be drawn into overly short-term thinking.

The choices they face aren't simple. In some cases, they may have to act to ensure their very survival (if they fail at that existential level, their entire collections may hit the market). But they have been entrusted with the care of things that are, collectively as well as individually, of profound and lasting importance. It is their job to safeguard these collections for the future, not to sift them with a view to finding parts of them wanting, expendable and convertible to cash.

Coronavirus: What you need to read

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Updated April 29, 2020 Show More Show Less

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Perspective | This is how bad things are for museums: They now have a green light to sell off their art

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Every major American art museum is sitting on assets that, from the outside, look enviable. They're called works of art. If they're by Vincent van Gogh or Frida Kahlo or Jackson Pollock, they may be worth tens, or even hundreds, of millions of dollars.

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A Belgian Museum Must Return $3.9 Million in Unused Tickets After Its Once-in-a-Lifetime Jan Van Eyck Blockbuster Got Cut Short by Coronavirus

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A Belgian Museum Must Return $3.9 Million in Unused Tickets After Its Once-in-a-Lifetime Jan Van Eyck Blockbuster Got Cut Short by Coronavirus

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The exhibition will not go back on view after museums in the country begin to reopen on May 18.

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Museums across Belgium are preparing to reopen beginning on May 18, but at least one blockbuster show has become a casualty of the global health crisis: " Van Eyck: An Optical Revolution " will not return to the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent.

The show, which opened February 1, was scheduled to remain on view only through April 29, and will not be extended to take into account the museum's reopening date.

The reality of the situation became clear to the show's organizers on April 16, when the country announced that museums would have to remain closed until at least early May.

"From that moment, it was clear that it would be impossible to reopen the exhibition," Steven Heyse, chief of staff for Ghent's deputy mayor of culture, told Artnet News in an email, citing the difficulties in "renegotiating loans, renewing insurances policies, security assignments, etc."

In the time that the exhibition was on view, 129,000 visitors passed through the museum's doors. But an additional 144,000 art lovers had already bought tickets, according to the Art Newspaper.

With admission priced at €25 ($27), the total cost of reimbursement could be as high as €3.6 million ($3.9 million). "The impact is currently not yet fully assessable," Heyse said.

The museum is working with its insurance company to issue refunds to ticket holders, and will be contacting those who purchased admission.

The show's truncated run comes as a major blow to the institution, which spent four years planning the exhibition, widely billed as a " once-in-a-lifetime experience."

Only around 20 autographs works by Jan van Eyck are known to exist, and the museum had managed to pull together 13 of them for the occasion, making the show the largest-ever dedicated to the Flemish Old Master. Altogether, 73 collections loans objects for the show. It was the centerpiece of a citywide theme year, " OMG! Van Eyck was here," now extended through spring 2021.

"Never say never, but it will be incredibly hard to realize this once again," Heyse said.

The core of the show, which also included works from the artist's studio, copies of his lost works, and other historic paintings, was the Ghent Altarpiece from St. Bavo's Cathedral. Completed by the artist and his brother, Hubert Van Eyck, in 1432, it was once stolen by Nazis, and one panel remains missing.

Most recently, the Ghent Altarpiece was the subject of a eight-year conservation project. The last phase took three years, cost €2.2 million ($2.44 million), and was completed in December. ( A surprisingly humanoid lamb subsequently went viral.)

In the MSK exhibition, "the panels were displayed outside the cathedral for the first and last time in history," Heyse said. "The public was able to see the restored exterior panels of the Ghent Altarpiece for the first time in original condition, alongside the other masterpieces, exactly as they were seen by contemporaries of Van Eyck."

Seeing some of the panels outside the cathedral was all the more significant because the church keeps the altarpiece under glass, more than five feet aways from the viewer. The cathedral was among 73 collections that had loaned objects for the show, including London's National Gallery and Berlin's Gemäldegalerie.

"All of them were informed immediately about the closure of the exhibition and asked to consider an extension of their loan for the duration of the interruption of the exhibition," so that the museum wouldn't have to worry about deinstalling or shipping works during a government-mandated shutdown, explained Heyse. But there was just no way to extend the loans beyond that.

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A Belgian Museum Must Return $3.9 Million in Unused Tickets After COVID-19 Derailed Its Once-in-a-Lifetime Van Eyck Show

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Museums across Belgium are preparing to reopen beginning on May 18, but at least one blockbuster show has become a casualty of the global health crisis: " Van Eyck: An Optical Revolution " will not return to the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent.

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Museums Scramble to Document the Pandemic, Even as It Unfolds

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Museums Scramble to Document the Pandemic, Even as It Unfolds

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With photographs, field interviews and mass surveys, institutions are trying to preserve information about everyday life during the crisis for future study.

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Museums Scramble to Document the Pandemic, Even as It Unfolds

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With photographs, field interviews and mass surveys, institutions are trying to preserve information about everyday life during the crisis for future study.

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[Patrimonio Quo Vadis] La narrazione nei musei ai tempi del Covid-19

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[Patrimonio Quo Vadis] La narrazione nei musei ai tempi del Covid-19

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Ebbene, il museo che narra è un museo capace di raccontare, ma anche di ascoltare. Non solo perché l’atto stesso del racconto è aperto all’incontro, presuppone sempre un “altro” in ascolto, lo interpella e sollecita, trasforma il visitatore in partecipante. Il museo è capace di ascoltare soprattutto nel momento in cui riconosce i narratori e i pubblici che di volta in volta coinvolge (che siano giovani o adulti, italiani o immigrati, studiosi, “semplici” cittadini o persino individui che un museo non l’hanno mai visto in vita loro) non tanto come rappresentanti di comunità “immaginate”,[8] ma innanzitutto come persone, ognuna portatrice di vissuti, di saperi, di memorie, di sguardi. In una parola sola: di mondi. E riconosce che questi mondi sono tanto importanti quanto quelli custoditi ed esposti in buon ordine dentro le sue sale e le sue vetrine. Perché senza i primi, i secondi ammutoliscono, svuotandosi di significato.

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Nel gennaio 2018 incominciava il lungo viaggio che ha portato alla creazione dei percorsi narrati di "Fabbriche di Storie", un progetto dell'Area mediazione culturale e accessibilità delle Gallerie degli Uffizi a cura di Maria Grazia Panigada e della sottoscritta.

Allora, camminare lungo i corridoi e nelle sale degli Uffizi vuoti (se ci capitava di lavorare il lunedì) ci sembrava un privilegio straordinario, e lo è stato, davvero.
La sala degli Uffizi con il dittico di Piero della Francesca che ritrae Federico da Montefeltro e Battista Sforza; sullo sfondo, la "Sant'Anna Metterza" di Masaccio e Masolino. Foto scattata da Simona Bodo il 12 febbraio 2018.
Ma vedere le immagini che girano in questi giorni di quelle stesse sale (come di tante altre nei musei di tutta Italia) immerse nel silenzio, come inanimate, dove direttori, conservatori, educatori cercano di fare proprio questo - rianimarle - ci ricorda come mai prima d'ora quanto priva di senso sia tutta questa bellezza, se non è costantemente ricreata nella relazione con le persone.

Sono pienamente consapevole dei rischi di suonare retorica mentre cerco di mettere ordine nei tanti pensieri, nelle tante domande che sorgono spontanee da questo tempo sospeso, dai perimetri improvvisamente ristretti, dai dialoghi interrotti, dal ripiegamento su ciò che più è essenziale.

Eppure. Eppure quelle immagini che girano in questi giorni, di sale vuote, di opere e oggetti in rianimazione virtuale, non mi danno tregua. È come se, all'improvviso, tutto quello in cui un'intera comunità di pratica ha creduto e per cui ha lavorato in questi anni avesse trovato una conferma definitiva e ineludibile, per quanto agli occhi di molti rasenti l'ovvio: la convinzione profonda che i musei sono per le persone, delle persone.

Di questi tempi si sente spesso dire che "nulla sarà come prima", che in momenti di crisi come quello che stiamo vivendo ci viene offerta una straordinaria opportunità di cambiamento. Se questo è vero, allora il "nulla come prima" vale anche - al netto di una sana dose di realismo e forse anche di composta disillusione - per i musei. Come se ogni cosa fosse stata messa a nudo anche per loro: la sterile autoreferenzialità, il bisogno vitale di un dialogo serrato, di una relazione di senso con le persone. Temi su cui riflettiamo da anni, da decenni, e che trovano nella crisi di oggi uno smisurato catalizzatore.

A tutte queste cose penso, mentre i musei di mezzo mondo chiudono i battenti, e chi vi lavora si affanna a trovare una risposta a questa emergenza senza precedenti. Alcuni, come bene sottolinea Maria Elena Colombo in un articolo di recente comparso su Artribune,[1] arrivano a questo appuntamento preparati; altri (si) improvvisano come meglio possono, non sempre sortendo "esiti felici"; semmai, rinforzando quel senso di autoreferenzialità, talvolta persino di irrilevanza per ampie fasce della collettività, che gli studi sui visitatori (soprattutto nei musei d'arte) continuano a confermarci da decenni. Al di là delle "competenze, risorse, infrastrutture adeguate" che la dimensione digitale richiede, mi domando se non ci sia anche un'importante questione di linguaggio da affrontare, e che si estende ben oltre i confini temporali e spaziali che il Coronavirus ci ha imposto.

A partire dal 2010, Maria Grazia Panigada, Silvia Mascheroni ed io siamo state coinvolte in numerosi progetti di mediazione del patrimonio in chiave narrativa. Un percorso che ci ha portate ad affinare un metodo applicato con successo a contesti assai diversi - dalle Gallerie degli Uffizi e la Pinacoteca di Brera al Sistema museale del Chianti e del Valdarno Fiorentino, dalla Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo al Museo Popoli e Culture del PIME a Milano - e che dal novembre 2019 (pochi mesi, eppure al tempo stesso un'era geologica fa) ha trovato una "casa" comune nel sito Patrimonio di Storie.[2]

"Quando penso a dove abiti veramente il patrimonio, mi chiedo se non sia sostanzialmente nella sua "narrazione". E [penso] che se il patrimonio non è narrabile, forse non è patrimonio":[3] in queste poche, preziose parole dell'amico antropologo Mario Turci sembra condensarsi la sostanza delle esperienze da noi vissute in questi anni, convinte come siamo che il patrimonio culturale debba "essere reso "prossimo", fatto risuonare con la vita delle persone, [...] condizione necessaria non solo per salvaguardarlo e trasmetterlo alle generazioni future, ma per renderlo vivo e attuale".[4]

Grazie alla mediazione sapiente e appassionata di Maria Grazia Panigada, il nostro lavoro attinge alla grande tradizione del teatro di narrazione italiano. È dall'intreccio tra quest'ultima e gli altrettanto preziosi saperi dell'educazione al patrimonio che nasce una visione della narrazione non come atto performativo,[5] bensì come atto quotidiano ed elemento fondamentale della relazione umana: si narra per il desiderio e l'urgenza di comunicare, di condividere i propri vissuti, i propri pensieri, i propri sogni, facendo appello non tanto a tecniche oratorie, quanto piuttosto ad abilità espressive ed emotive.

Questa esperienza attraversa la storia umana nei tempi e alle latitudini più diverse. Il linguaggio della narrazione, in altre parole, è universale.

Ecco perché ci sembra tanto importante utilizzarlo anche dentro a un museo, in una biblioteca o in un archivio, nelle strade di una città e nei "luoghi della memoria", davanti a un paesaggio... Perché, a differenza del linguaggio tradizionale di una visita guidata, parla a tutti, ci interpella in prima persona (non come un pubblico indistinto), ed è in grado di mettere in moto quelle risonanze che l'incontro con un'opera d'arte, un oggetto o una qualsiasi testimonianza patrimoniale (anche intangibile) suscita nell'esperienza e nel vissuto personale di ognuno, se ci diamo il tempo per guardarle in profondità.

Nelle parole di Laura Curino,

"Il racconto del narratore nutre l'ascoltatore, ma è l'ascoltatore a dare forza al narratore. L'uno senza l'altro non esistono. Nella reciprocità confidente del rapporto è contenuto il segreto di una narrazione che si crea e si rinnova, nonostante la ripetizione inevitabile a chi narra per professione. [...]

Conoscere il proprio pubblico, avere un progetto che lo coinvolga necessariamente, condividere quanto possibile quel progetto, sono premesse che fondano l'esperienza del raccontare. [...]

Ogni racconto personale importante, riscattato dal silenzio, o fatto riemergere dall'oblio, genera disequilibrio momentaneo, a volte turbamento, a volte sofferenza. Ma quando quel racconto riesce a fissarsi negli elementi costitutivi, generare emozione, inscriversi in un progetto e nutrirlo, quando riceve gli strumenti adatti per essere ben organizzato e ripetuto senza perdere intensità, quando il racconto, insomma, si mette in relazione ad un altro da sé disponibile all'ascolto, tutto si trasforma in piacere del raccontare".[6]

La narrazione nei musei, dunque, ha un risvolto relazionale e sociale importantissimo. Nel 1971, durante la Conferenza generale dell'International Council of Museums, John Kinard, allora direttore del "museo di quartiere" di Anacostia, ghetto afroamericano di Washington, affermava che "il museo si pone effettivamente al servizio dell'uomo se si adopera in modo diretto a favore dell'uomo di oggi e di domani. [...] Se vogliamo renderci utili agli esseri umani di oggi e di domani, dobbiamo impegnarci sui problemi di oggi e dimostrare in questo modo che esistono possibilità di vita migliori. [...] La popolazione parla e discute, il museo è l'orecchio in ascolto".[7]

Ebbene, il museo che narra è un museo capace di raccontare, ma anche di ascoltare. Non solo perché l'atto stesso del racconto è aperto all'incontro, presuppone sempre un "altro" in ascolto, lo interpella e sollecita, trasforma il visitatore in partecipante. Il museo è capace di ascoltare soprattutto nel momento in cui riconosce i narratori e i pubblici che di volta in volta coinvolge (che siano giovani o adulti, italiani o immigrati, studiosi, "semplici" cittadini o persino individui che un museo non l'hanno mai visto in vita loro) non tanto come rappresentanti di comunità "immaginate",[8] ma innanzitutto come persone, ognuna portatrice di vissuti, di saperi, di memorie, di sguardi. In una parola sola: di mondi. E riconosce che questi mondi sono tanto importanti quanto quelli custoditi ed esposti in buon ordine dentro le sue sale e le sue vetrine. Perché senza i primi, i secondi ammutoliscono, svuotandosi di significato.

Poi, c'è la questione dello sguardo. La narrazione invita il visitatore a "riscoprire l'arte antica e desueta dello scrutinio prolungato "dal vivo", in presenza dell'opera".[9] A certe condizioni di lavoro, con tempi distesi e con il sostegno del gruppo che fa da cassa di risonanza, il racconto non nasce mai da una suggestione impressionistica alla "macchia di Rorschach", ma è quasi imposto da questo attento scrutinio dell'opera.

Va sottolineato peraltro con forza che la questione dello sguardo non riguarda solo i narratori "per caso" (ovvero "non per professione"), né tanto meno lo "spettatore", spesso frettoloso, bulimico o distratto, ma anche il personale scientifico ed educativo del museo, la cui capacità di osservare, descrivere, mediare l'opera è spesso limitata da filtri interpretativi preesistenti.

Per un museo, d'altra parte, investire sullo sguardo e sul vissuto delle persone, invece di arroccarsi nella propria autoreferenzialità, non significa abdicare al rigore scientifico:[10] per ogni narrazione c'è un lavoro di puntuale accompagnamento da parte degli studiosi, degli specialisti, dei curatori coinvolti in ciascun progetto. Questa supervisione non è un atto calato dall'alto, né tantomeno un tentativo più o meno esplicito di mantenere il controllo sui contenuti; il nostro è un lavoro di tessitura tra Storia e storie, dove i due livelli - quello disciplinare e quello narrativo - non solo "coesistono", ma si alimentano a vicenda, in un gioco di rimandi e risonanze che arricchisce l'uno e l'altro.

Ecco perché amiamo sottolineare che grazie al linguaggio della narrazione il patrimonio culturale, da "oggetto" di conservazione, può trasformarsi in uno straordinario vettore di conversazione.

Per toccare con mano che cosa tutto questo possa significare, vorrei provare a fare con voi un breve viaggio attraverso alcuni brani tratti dalle narrazioni di "Fabbriche di Storie", il progetto delle Gallerie degli Uffizi cui ho accennato in apertura. Ve lo propongo perché, ai tempi del Coronavirus, il suo significato si dilata e amplifica, raccontando le opere in un linguaggio inedito e richiamando chi è in ascolto a guardare il museo con occhi veramente nuovi.

Dal maggio 2019, "Fabbriche di Storie" è diventato un'offerta culturale permanente delle Gallerie degli Uffizi nella forma di un audio-percorso consultabile sul sito del museo,[11] oltre che sulle maggiori piattaforme di podcasting: dodici capolavori raccontati da un gruppo eterogeneo di narratori, composto da operatori museali e "nuovi cittadini" che hanno intrecciato alla storia delle opere racconti personali che toccano temi universali: dalla famiglia all'amicizia, dalla preghiera al viaggio.

Tutti temi che alla luce dell'emergenza di oggi assumono una risonanza se possibile ancora più intensa, sollecitando domande e forse offrendo risposte, o anche solo un piccolo conforto, a una collettività il cui tessuto affettivo e sociale, oltre che economico, è profondamente lacerato.

Curiosamente, all'inizio della sua narrazione sull' Annunciazione di Sandro Botticelli - un affresco staccato esposto nella stessa sala della Primavera, e per questo motivo spesso osservato frettolosamente, se non del tutto ignorato, prima di dirigere lo sguardo verso una delle opere "iconiche" degli Uffizi - Diana Kong parla proprio di un'epidemia:
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Annunciazione di Sandro Botticelli, 1481
"Questo affresco è stato dipinto per la chiesa di San Martino presso lo Spedale di Santa Maria della Scala a Firenze, un luogo in cui venivano accolti i bambini abbandonati. Subito penso: ecco perché nell'opera Maria ha un vuoto tra le braccia e un'espressione che a me sembra accigliata. Non credo che in questo mondo esista una madre che vuole davvero lasciare il suo bimbo. Sicuramente c'è una causa inenarrabile.

Dal 1478 al 1479 Firenze fu colpita da una terribile pestilenza, e molte delle vittime dell'epidemia trovarono sepoltura nel monastero annesso alla chiesa.

Nel 1481, Sandro Botticelli fu pagato per la realizzazione di un'Annunciazione, probabilmente un ex-voto a Maria per la fine della peste. La natura sullo sfondo, così tranquilla, bella, senza malanno, poteva dare conforto alle persone. L'angelo poteva portare loro una buona notizia".

Poco più oltre, Diana parla di un vissuto personale - quello della distanza dai genitori, rimasti in Cina - che, di questi tempi, assume una eccezionale pregnanza:

"Nella distanza tra l'angelo e Maria ho sentito subito la lontananza dalla mia famiglia.

Ogni volta che viaggio spedisco una cartolina a mia madre. Lei le conserva tutte in una scatola. Sono importanti per creare una memoria, una storia che possiamo condividere, se no di questi anni passati lontane l'una dall'altra rimarrebbe poco.

Non sempre le cartoline arrivano nell'ordine in cui le ho spedite, alcune si perdono, ma non importa. In questo mondo nulla è perfetto".

In un'altra narrazione, quella di Kuassi Sessou proprio sulla Primavera di Botticelli, ritroviamo invece in tutta la sua forza il significato della gestualità rituale per "implorare le divinità, scacciare la malattia, dare la salute", ma anche per restituire centralità agli esseri umani e alle relazioni che li uniscono in una comunità; un potere trasformativo non a caso evocato dalla danza delle Tre Grazie, "simbolo dell'amore che si dona" e delle sue "tre caratteristiche fondamentali: saper dare, saper ricevere, saper restituire":
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Primavera di Sandro Botticelli, 1480 ca., dettaglio della danza delle Tre Grazie
"Il mio sguardo torna a posarsi sul prato, sui piedi di queste tre fanciulle eteree che stanno danzando. Sono così lievi che i loro passi non lasceranno nemmeno un'orma sull'erba.

Forse sentono una musica interiore che prende forma nei loro gesti, nell'intreccio delle mani che creano un movimento a onda, fluido e armonioso.

È una danza talmente perfetta da sembrare compiuta. Eppure è proprio questo il punto del dipinto che mi invita a entrare. Entrerei a piccoli passi, esitante, come facevo da bambino, imitando i grandi. A un certo punto ti trovi dentro al cerchio, senza sapere come ci sei arrivato. I piedi nudi premono sulla terra con forza. Incominci a fare come gli altri, a muoverti come gli altri, e ti riesce, e sei parte di quel cerchio. Non tutto è chiaro quando si danza, non sempre si conosce il significato di ogni gesto, ma se ne sente la forza.

Se chiudo gli occhi, rivedo le donne del mio villaggio quando uscivano dal luogo sacro e si disponevano in cerchio. Questa danza si svolgeva una volta all'anno, quando il villaggio era illuminato dalla luna piena. Lo spazio era delimitato da lanterne ricavate dall'involucro della papaia, e riempite di olio di palma.

I gesti delle donne seguivano un rituale preciso, per implorare le divinità, scacciare la malattia, dare la salute, ma al tempo stesso spiegare la rotondità della terra, la centralità dell'essere umano.

Gesti diversi, contesti diversi, ma è poi così distante dall'uomo signore di tutte cose che si celebrava a Firenze nel Quattrocento?"

Ascoltando questo brano di racconto, mi chiedo se non avvenga la stessa magia per tutti: pur essendo trasportati in un altro tempo, in un altro luogo, in un altro vissuto, non abbiamo mai distolto lo sguardo dal gruppo delle Tre Grazie. Abbiamo continuato a vedere la Primavera, anche se con occhi nuovi: arricchita - non svilita - da uno sguardo, quello di Kuassi, che è entrato a far parte delle nostre vite.

Incominciamo a intuire che gli oggetti di un museo sono portatori di altre forze; che i rituali, le dinamiche, le trame del nostro rapporto con il patrimonio non si esauriscono nell'assimilazione di concetti e nozioni, ma vanno "oltre il conoscere".[12]

Come è successo a Fabiana, assistente di sala che le opere, in più di trent'anni di lavoro agli Uffizi, non le aveva mai "viste", ma che grazie al suo lavoro di narrazione sull' Annunciazione di Cestello e Cristo in Pietà di Botticelli giunge a questa consapevolezza folgorante:
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Annunciazione di Cestello di Sandro Botticelli, 1489-90
"Il dipinto, destinato alla chiesa del Cestello, fu commissionato da Benedetto Guardi, un banchiere il cui stemma di famiglia compare nella predella, ai lati del Cristo in pietà.

Dopo varie vicende, l'opera approdò agli Uffizi nel 1872.

In quella stessa Galleria delle Pitture e delle Statue ho iniziato a lavorare nel 1986 come assistente alla vigilanza. Ma le opere non le guardavo, stavo troppo male.

L'Annunciazione del Cestello l'ho incontrata davvero quando mi è stato chiesto di scegliere un'opera, così ho incominciato a osservare quadri e sculture in modo diverso. Ho sentito qualcosa in queste mani, che Maria tiene come per proteggersi il cuore. Il cuoricino del bambino, la prima cosa che si legge nell'ecografia, non vedi nient'altro, il respiro, il soffio di un battito... Così ho scelto questa tavola, o lei ha scelto me, perché in fondo sono le opere che fanno da specchio alle nostre emozioni, ci assomigliano, ci chiamano a intrecciare la nostra storia con la loro".

Chissà da quanto tempo Fabiana era in cerca di uno specchio ai suoi vissuti, persino ai suoi sogni più inconfessabili; di un luogo dove poter dare voce e senso alla sua storia, farla brillare, riscattarla dal silenzio. Ed è qui, davanti all'Annunciazione, che ha trovato entrambi, come in una rivelazione inattesa.

Parafrasando il Marco Polo di Italo Calvino, di un museo "non godi le sette o le settantasette meraviglie, ma la risposta che dà a una tua domanda".

Abstract
In the past few weeks, we have been overwhelmed by an unprecedented wave of digital images showing empty museum spaces, with directors, curators and educators desperately trying - whether successfully or not - to bring their collections back to life. The current coronavirus (Covid-19) crisis has laid bare the simple, yet often neglected truth that cultural heritage is meaningless, if it is not constantly recreated in the relationship with people. Is this just a calamity triggered by a health emergency, forcing museums as well as other cultural institutions to close down, or is there something bigger at stake? Through the experience of Patrimonio di Storie, and more in particular of the "Factories of Stories" audio-trail at the Uffizi Galleries, this article explores the potential of storytelling as a powerful, universal language which triggers new conversations around heritage, and develops a more empathetic relationship with museum audiences, whether existing or new.
Simona Bodo è ricercatrice e consulente in problematiche di diversità culturale e inclusione sociale nei musei. Su questi temi cura studi, seminari, pubblicazioni, percorsi formativi e di progettazione per istituzioni pubbliche e private. È co-fondatrice di Patrimonio di Storie, e per Fondazione Ismu cura il programma Patrimonio e Intercultura e l'omonimo sito.

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[Patrimonio Quo Vadis] La narrazione nei musei ai tempi del Covid-19

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Nel gennaio 2018 incominciava il lungo viaggio che ha portato alla creazione dei percorsi narrati di "Fabbriche di Storie", un progetto dell'Area mediazione culturale e accessibilità delle Gallerie degli Uffizi a cura di Maria Grazia Panigada e della sottoscritta. Allora, camminare lungo i corridoi e nelle sale degli Uffizi vuoti (se ci capitava di lavorare il lunedì) ci sembrava un...

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La cultura in Rete porta una boccata d'ossigeno

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La cultura in Rete porta una boccata d'ossigeno

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Da quando il Coronavirus ha preso in ostaggio le nostre vite la cultura si è riversata in Rete. Proprio in questi giorni è stato annunciato che le 42. Giornate letterarie di Soletta in programma a fine maggio non saranno annullate o rimandate ma si faranno online. (...) Ma ha senso riversare gran parte degli appuntamenti pensati per essere dal vivo, delle attività, delle mostre e dei concerti online? Chi li segue? Ne abbiamo parlato con Fabio Viola, pioniere del gaming digitale in Italia, tra i migliori gamification designer al mondo, ideatore di TuoMuseo e di Father and Son, primo videogioco al mondo prodotto da un museo.

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Da quando il Coronavirus ha preso in ostaggio le nostre vite la cultura si è riversata in Rete. Proprio in questi giorni è stato annunciato che le 42. Giornate letterarie di Soletta in programma a fine maggio non saranno annullate o rimandate ma si faranno online. Se siete navigatori della Rete, chi non lo è in questi giorni, avrete notato la crescita esponenziale di contenuti e appuntamenti da parte di istituzioni culturali, case editrici, musei, teatri e altro. Se prima si raccomandava di non trascorrere troppo tempo davanti allo schermo in questi giorni di reclusione e di perdita economica tutto sembra lecito, persino virtuoso. Ma ha senso riversare gran parte degli appuntamenti pensati per essere dal vivo, delle attività, delle mostre e dei concerti online? Chi li segue?. Ne abbiamo parlato con Fabio Viola, pioniere del gaming digitale in Italia, tra i migliori gamification designer al mondo, ideatore di TuoMuseo e di Father and Son, primo videogioco al mondo prodotto da un museo.

La Rete in questi giorni di isolamento è diventata una boccata d'ossigeno per tutti, una piazza sociale, una sorta di isola della salvezza, sia per chi pubblica, sia per chi fruisce contenuti. Ma si ha anche l'impressione di assistere ad un congestionamento, vedi la decisione di Netflix di ridurre il "bitrate" in tutta Europa abbassando la definizione e alleggerendo del 25% il traffico sulla rete, e ad una contaminazione fuori misura di contenuti di bassa e di alta qualità.
La Rete in questo periodo non può essere la piattaforma ideale per tutti e per qualsiasi iniziativa e lo scrittore Fabio Viola lo spiega: "Chi sta riuscendo ad affrontare la situazione sono coloro i quali avevano già una strategia in atto, avevano già presidiato il digitale con una strategia coordinata di medio-lungo periodo. Questi attori sono oggi anche in grado di fornire dei contenuti rivelanti. Altri invece si limitano a seguire il trend momentaneo dettato dall'urgenza della chiusura del luogo fisico e concorrono così a creare una cacofonia di voci che finiscono per essere irrivelanti. Tutti gli sforzi moriranno non appena si tornerà al teatro o al museo".
Fabio Viola sa bene di che cosa parla, non soltanto per la sue esperienza nel campo ma anche per le chiamate lavorative che sta ricevendo. Molti enti culturali in difficoltà a causa della pandemia gli chiedono di andare online in cinque giorni ma non sono abituati a lavorare con il digitale e tutte le sue dinamiche in un'ottica di continuità. "Molti stanno continuando a vedere il proprio museo o teatro ancora come se fosse un attrattore culturale e dunque semplicemente riversando l'esperienza dal fisico al digitale. Mentre la pandemia ci sta offrendo l'occasione di trasformare le attività in attivatori culturali".
I cosiddetti attrattori culturali, invece, dice Viola, "mettono in atto delle politiche fisiche digitali di valorizzazione per portare le persone dentro il mio spazio. Se sono un attivatore, invece, lavoro per portare lo spazio verso le persone perché il mio scopo è attivare dei processi creativi, fungere da base di racconto, di socializzazione. Purtroppo molti dei progetti nati questi giorni riversano sul digitale la vecchia concezione degli attrattori".
Viola spiega così la sua osservazione, ovvero la "vecchia concezione degli attrattori": "Faccio fare il tour, ti racconto la pillola del giorno... Non portano mai il pubblico ad impossessarsi di quel bene in modo tale da utilizzarlo come un attivatore di esperienza".
Ma quali sono le iniziative più apprezzate in Rete in questi giorni? Fabio Viola cita Alfabeto Pandemico, un'iniziativa promossa da "Lo stato dei luoghi", un'associazione che riunisce diverse realtà culturali italiane. Sul sito www.lostatodeiluoghi.com "chiunque in maniera partecipativa può proporre e aggiungere un vocabolo declinandolo in base alla sua sensibilità attuale".
Si tratta di un'iniziativa che racconta attraverso un progetto collettivo, aperto e condiviso come in questi giorni di sospensione domestica in cui ci troviamo sta cambiando la percezione dello spazio comune e riflette su cosa diventano gli spazi quando il contatto dei corpi non è più possibile.
La Rete rimane dunque un posto meraviglioso ma abitarla deve avere un senso e soprattutto un pubblico, "chi già prima non fruiva di musei e di teatri non penso si appassioni improvvisamente. L'interesse per questo tipo di contenuti resta appannaggio di una nicchia piccolissima".

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La cultura in Rete porta una boccata d'ossigeno

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Da quando il Coronavirus ha preso in ostaggio le nostre vite la cultura si è riversata in Rete. Proprio in questi giorni è stato annunciato che le 42. Giornate letterarie di Soletta in programma a fine maggio non saranno annullate o rimandate ma si faranno online. Se siete navigatori della ...

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Un'intervista a Christian Greco, direttore del Museo Egizio di Torino in vista della riapertura del 18 maggio. «In momenti di massima affluenza come la stagione primaverile partiva una visita guidata ogni sette minuti. Per conquistare questo risultato, era stata messa a punto una vera e propria macchina che dava lavoro a tantissimi professionisti. Nel momento in cui la macchina si arresta, anche gli introiti si fermano. Gli oneri, invece, permangono»

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"Quando nel 2014 sono arrivato al Museo Egizio di Torino eravamo in tredici. Oggi siamo in cinquantanove. Assieme alla squadra si sono moltiplicati anche i costi, sostenibili fino al lockdown. La nostra istituzione non può tuttavia assorbire lo shock economico causato dall'emergenza sanitaria. La strategia di radicamento portata avanti su tutto il territorio nazionale - solo gli studenti delle scuole che annualmente ci raggiungevano ammontavano a circa 290mila unità - si è dissolta all'improvviso", racconta al manifesto Christian Greco, direttore del secondo museo di egittologia più importante al mondo dopo quello del Cairo e del sesto più visitato in Italia nel 2019 con quasi 900mila presenze. "In momenti di massima affluenza come la stagione primaverile - continua Greco - partiva una visita guidata ogni sette minuti. Per conquistare questo risultato, era stata messa a punto una vera e propria macchina che dava lavoro a tantissimi professionisti. Nel momento in cui la macchina si arresta, anche gli introiti si fermano. Gli oneri, invece, permangono".

In che misura il numero di ingressi influisce sul budget del museo e come siete riusciti, negli ultimi cinque anni, a raggiungere l'indipendenza finanziaria?
La bigliettazione corrisponde al 68% degli introiti. Il resto lo guadagnavamo grazie agli eventi, alle mostre itineranti - attualmente abbiamo due percorsi espositivi chiusi presso il Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art di Kansas City e il Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil di San Paolo - e al bookshop.

Quali saranno i prossimi passi per superare la crisi?
Tornare innanzitutto all'articolo 9 della Costituzione e al nostro ruolo all'interno della società: siamo un'istituzione politica nel senso etimologico del termine e partecipiamo alla vita della comunità in cui siamo inseriti. Lo facciamo avendo ben presente il nostro obiettivo principale, che è quello della cura dei reperti.

Cura è una bella parola che va al di là della definizione di tutela...
Sì, è una parola latina meravigliosa da cui deriva curatore. Egli deve studiare il reperto, interpretarlo, attuare la diagnostica preliminare a qualsiasi intervento di restauro per poi poter pubblicare e comunicare l'oggetto. Curare un reperto significa anche non lasciare che esso cada in oblio. L' indagine sui beni culturali, infatti, va difesa al pari della ricerca accademica.

Alcune critiche sono state mosse riguardo al grido d'allarme lanciato dal Museo Egizio sulla stampa. C'è chi dice che non è il pubblico a dover porre rimedio ai problemi finanziari dei privati...
Credo ci sia un fraintendimento. La nostra è una fondazione mista in cui il pubblico prevale sul privato perché oltre a due enti bancari ci sono il Mibact, il Comune e la Regione. Abbiamo un accordo trentennale (2004-2034, nda) con il Ministero, il quale vigila - attraverso le direzioni generali - sul nostro operato e nomina il presidente. Inoltre, lavoriamo sotto la supervisione della Soprintendenza. Di fatto, la Fondazione Museo delle Antichità Egizie di Torino gestisce per nome e per conto dello Stato la collezione ma senza gravare sul contribuente. Al contrario, tutti i guadagni della bigliettazione sono stati finora reinvestiti in ricerca, restauri e didattica. Abbiamo rilanciato gli scavi in Egitto, a Saqqara e a Deir el-Medina, fondato una rivista double peer review in open access, avviato un processo editoriale encomiabile, assunto tantissimo personale soprattutto scientifico, tra cui 11 curatori supplementari e 5 restauratori. In un momento in cui non possiamo far leva sui visitatori, necessitiamo dunque di un sostegno economico.

Con quali modalità i luoghi della cultura, che sono anche luoghi di ricerca, possono migliorare la loro competitività?
Innanzitutto con la rivoluzione digitale. Abbiamo ora più che mai il dovere di ancorare il nostro patrimonio alla cittadinanza, rendendolo comprensibile. Per realizzare tale scopo servono strumenti innovativi che non riducano il tour virtuale a un surrogato della visita al museo che adesso non ci è concessa. La digitalizzazione deve affermarsi come mezzo di conoscenza, che permetta di vedere ciò che non sarebbe visibile nemmeno se fossimo difronte all'oggetto.

Un po' quello che avete fatto con la mostra "Archeologia invisibile, momentaneamente esplorabile online
In questa mostra, infatti, convogliamo nel visitatore tutta quella serie di processi di ricerca che servono per assimilare la biografia di un reperto. Attualmente ci stiamo muovendo per potenziare il settore digitale, coinvolgendo oltre ad esperti di informatica figure quali psicologi, sociologi, filosofi e antropologi che ci aiutino a trasmettere l'agency dell'oggetto al soggetto anche in un contesto di non contiguità fisica tra le due parti.

Nell'offerta digitale rientra anche un database relativo ai papiri in open access.
Si tratta di un progetto europeo intitolato Crossing Boundaries, grazie al quale mettiamo online frammenti di papiro inediti, di cui forniamo anche la trascrizione, la traslitterazione e la traduzione. Molto spesso ci si dimentica che il museo, oltre a magnifiche opere d'arte, possiede un notevole patrimonio documentario, nella fattispecie l'archivio amministrativo che proviene dal villaggio di Deir el-Medina, uno dei più importanti - fra quelli sopravvissuti - dell'antico Egitto. Una memoria indispensabile per capire com'era regolamentata la vita all'interno di questa città fondata all'inizio del Nuovo Regno per coloro che erano destinati a lavorare nelle necropoli della Valle dei Re e delle Regine.

Inoltre, siete stati i primi, in Italia, a rendere fruibile la collezione del museo con la licenza creative commons 2.0. Cosa vi ha spinto a una scelta ancora così poco praticata?
I musei, le collezioni, gli archivi non appartengono a chi ha la fortuna di occuparsene. Il nostro compito, al contrario, è quello di offrire un servizio alla comunità, da quella scientifica fino ai bambini. In questo senso, al di là della gestione, il Museo Egizio è davvero un ente pubblico.

Quali attività sono proseguite durante la chiusura?
Il museo ha assicurato una guardiania armata 24 ore su 24. Da remoto, abbiamo fatto le verifiche sulle condizioni tecniche per il mantenimento di temperatura e umidità nei locali. Ogni giorno due conservatori si recano al museo e realizzano un condition report affinché venga costantemente monitorato lo stato di conservazione dei reperti e possano eventualmente essere predisposti interventi immediati. La comunicazione continua a distanza, così come la ricerca. I curatori lavorano sia sulle pubblicazioni scientifiche che per produrre contenuti destinati al pubblico. Il collection management si impegna a portare a termine quei compiti che spesso rimangono indietro. Abbiamo appena finito di effettuare 1800 foto di amuleti, i cui dati grezzi dovranno essere elaborati e rifiniti. Certo, in questo momento saremmo dovuti essere sullo scavo di Saqqara ma restiamo vicini all'Egitto con un progetto internazionale che si chiama Transforming the Egyptian Museum of Cairo di cui siamo capofila e al quale partecipano il Louvre, il British Museum, l'Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung di Berlino e il Rijksmuseum van Oudheden di Leiden.

Secondo le ultime disposizioni del governo, i musei potranno riaprire dal 18 maggio. Come vi state organizzando?
Durante questo periodo, abbiamo collaborato con il Politecnico di Torino per studiare un protocollo di sicurezza. Oltre al termoscanner, all'utilizzo obbligatorio della mascherina durante le visite e alla presenza di erogatori di gel disinfettante in varie parti del museo, valutiamo un distanziamento sociale che si aggira attorno ai 40 metri quadrati per ciascun utente.
Attraverso la prenotazione online saremo in grado di regolamentare gli ingressi, che saranno ridotti rispetto ai 1600 giornalieri. Forse ci saranno dei controlli elettronici e gli operatori di sala dovranno vigilare affinché non si creino assembramenti. È una nuova sfida, per dare a tutti la possibilità di tornare nelle nostre sale senza temere per la propria salute e potendosi concentrare sulle storie che i reperti hanno da raccontare.

È un'occasione per riflettere a un turismo più sostenibile?
Per quanto ci riguarda i numeri erano adeguati anche prima dello scoppio della pandemia ma è chiaro che adesso il modello dovrà cambiare. Abbiamo l'opportunità di radicare il patrimonio all'interno della popolazione locale. Ci sono infatti segmenti di visitatori che grandi istituzioni urbane come la nostra faticano ad intercettare, ad esempio la fascia che va dai 18 ai 35 anni, persone che non tornano in uno spazio culturale dai tempi della scuola. Il mio sogno è che tutti i torinesi riscoprano l'Egizio.

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La cura del reperto al tempo del virus | il manifesto

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Un'intervista a Christian Greco, direttore del Museo Egizio di Torino in vista della riapertura del 18 maggio. "In momenti di massima affluenza come la stagione primaverile partiva una visita guidata ogni sette minuti. Per conquistare questo risultato, era stata messa a punto una vera e propria macchina che dava lavoro a tantissimi professionisti.

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How Museum Hack went from $2.8 million per year to zero in 3 days

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How Museum Hack went from $2.8 million per year to zero in 3 days

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Disclaimer: This isn’t a story about museums. (...) This article is about how a small museum tour company is navigating the crisis.

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Museum Hack News April 20, 2020

A few weeks ago we got the first call from a museum partner: they were canceling group gatherings, including all third party tours.

Over the next few days, every museum we operate in announced closures. First for a few days, then for a few weeks, and now for at least a few months.

At the same time, our corporate clients implemented internal travel bans and stops on group events. Nearly all of our private tours canceled, and new business stopped coming in.

In 72 hours we went from running 50+ tours per week to zero, which also meant no work for our guides and nearly zero revenue.

In this post I will share more about that story and the actions we've taken since.

Specifically:

How we managed going from $250,000 per month to nearly zero.

The pivot we made to start recovering in less than 24 hours.

Our short term plan for Museum Hack.

Let's get to it.

Disclaimer: This isn't a story about museums

The interplay between a global pandemic and the museum field is complex, and not one we are attempting to cover in this article.

This article is about how a small museum tour company is navigating the crisis.

There are museums and museum professionals doing inspiring work despite a wildly fluctuating climate. You are awesome. You have our admiration and support.

What happens when you lose $250,000 in monthly revenue

Museum Hack is a mission-based for profit, which means we have two imperatives: work on the mission, and keep our bank account above zero.

Staying above zero is difficult with no revenue 🙂

When you scale business operations to manage $2.8 million in annual income, you invest in a team and systems that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per month. That system is like a carefully set table where every part has its place.

Losing all of your revenue is like cutting the legs off the table and trying to catch the pieces as it falls to the ground. Unless you have another significant source of funds, you need to make changes quickly.

The first thing we did was make a list of ways we could reduce spending, and a second list of how we could earn revenue.

Some of the spending changes happened as soon as they made the list. For example, we cut our online ad spend, switched from a $4800 per year email platform to a self-hosted one that is better and costs about $4 per month, and put a halt on internal travel. We prioritized non-labor reductions first.

That initial round of reducing spending gave us breathing room. We carefully watched the market for the next few days for any indication of what would happen next. We gave our team notice that everything was under review.

A few days later, museums confirmed extended closures and we decided on a short-term layoff for our guide staff. It's a complex and difficult decision to take away someone's job and stability. We made the decision because we had no work available for our people, and the layoff would allow them to access unemployment benefits. We set up an emergency fund to support our team with instant distributions while they made the transition, and this emergency fund remains active.

For our full time staff, our plan was to keep them employed as long as we could. We made plans to keep these team members working on marketing projects and other parts of a long term strategic plan. The mindset was that this challenging period will eventually end, and we could position the company for a quick recovery.

On the revenue front, we brainstormed a wide variety of ideas for how we could earn money, some of which had merit. We talked about virtual tours, an online conference, remote bootcamp and more. One of the challenges was that it didn't feel like an appropriate step to launch paid offerings to the museum community or our public guests. We were in a Catch-22 scenario where we needed to find new revenue to survive and charging our audience wasn't a viable option.

Then, one crucial insight saved us.

Our 24 hour pivot to virtual events

Last year, we quietly purchased and started developing the domain teambuilding.com. The goal was to expand the for-profit part of our operations with corporate offerings both within and outside museums. The new offerings provided more work to our people, and more revenue to fuel our mission and projects. We positioned Museum Hack's co-owner, Michael, as the CEO of teambuilding.com, with Tasia continuing to lead Museum Hack.

This purchase wasn't out of the blue.

One of Museum Hack's most successful initiatives is our corporate team building tours. Via this program, we've brought tens of thousands of people into our partner museums, from organizations like Amazon, Google, Facebook, Johnson & Johnson, Chipotle and hundreds of others.

With museum closures, the corporate tours were effectively on pause, however what we had learned from them was still top of mind. With the global shift to remote work, we anticipated the same companies would be looking to connect staff online for training and team building. We dug into data available via Google and other platforms, and saw a promising increase in virtual experiences for corporate teams.

Museum Hack had done some online training in the past, and we have always been a 100% remote work company, but virtual corporate events were new to us. All we had was a blog article from a few years ago about virtual team building with remote teams. Still, this area seemed like our best shot at creating new revenue for the business, and we redirected our entire operational capacity toward it.

It's been a little over a month since that shift and the results are promising. We managed a small profit in March despite the loss of all tour revenue, and are on track toward a strong recovery. We've started bringing our guides back to work, and continue to increase our capacity to do so. We have more than breathing room; we have a viable business again.

This article isn't really about teambuilding.com, but here is a quick summary of operations. We work with organizations to help build culture and community through team building. Our virtual offerings include training like Working Without Pants, which is a seminar on how to work from home effectively, and tiny campfire, where we ship s'more kits to guests and then tell historic ghost stories around a virtual campfire; inspired by stories we tell at the museum.

One of our most successful event types is online storytelling workshops where we condense a portion of our three-month training program for Museum Hack tour guides into a two hour, interactive training on how to tell engaging stories.

The Gregg Museum of Art & Design at NC State University did an Online Office Games event with us and wrote about the experience on the museum's blog.

Virtual events are a bright light for us in an otherwise dark time. We are sharing what we are learning with other businesses to help them recover, and expect the insights to have long term benefits for Museum Hack as well.

Let's talk about Museum Hack.

Our short term plan for Museum Hack

For as long as museums are closed, Museum Hack as it was cannot support a team of 50+ people. We are a museum tour company, and our obsession is live, social experiences. For now, Museum Hack is in a gentle hibernation mode.

We are experimenting with what a virtual Museum Hack could be, including the forementioned ideas in online tours, conferences and training. We do not have a specific timeline or commitment to any of these projects, and will not launch them until we have confidence in delivering a world class experience.

Via teambuilding.com we are starting to experiment with experiences that blend our renegade storytelling with internet friendly themes. One of Museum Hack's first tour guides is leading a seminar called Beer & Sharks, combining expertise with fermented grains with experience developing programming for zoos and aquariums. Other guides are working on content highlighting the Library of Alexandria, mollusks, volcanoes and vikings. It's not Museum Hack, but it's in the spirit. For now, the code name is Nerd Talks, and it's like a mini interactive Ted-style talk with the reverent irreverence dial turned to level 10. More on Nerd Talks soon.

Final thoughts

For as long as we exist, we will be working to re-imagine museum experiences. It's in Museum Hack's mission-based blood, even when we are in hibernation.

For now, we are fighting like hell to keep our operations alive and our people employed. In a cascading economy, we are adjusting to whatever the new normal is as quickly as a small bootstrapped company can. We are grateful for our team as they make the shift with us.

We will stabilize, and we will rebuild the table.

💖 Tasia + Michael

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How Museum Hack went from $2.8 million per year to zero in 3 days - Museum Hack

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A few weeks ago we got the first call from a museum partner: they were canceling group gatherings, including all third party tours. Over the next few days, every museum we operate in announced closures. First for a few days, then for a few weeks, and now for at least a few months.

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Notes from the lockdown: Making a situated museum in Queens

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Notes from the lockdown: Making a situated museum in Queens

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Just one year ago, I came to live in New York as the director of the Queens Museum. Since I arrived, I have been working with our team to reimagine the museum in a way that will connect us even more deeply with our communities in Queens and beyond. Over the past year, we have developed a model of a museum that is inclusive, hyperlocal, accessible and global and that continues to be defined by conversations with its communities.

The museum has an amazing legacy of pioneering work that, combined with its history as the site of two World's Fairs and the UN General Assembly, is why I wanted to come to work here. When I arrived the Museum had been through a very public and challenging experience that led to internal turmoil as well as a change in how it was perceived by many of its stakeholders. I could never have imagined, a year later, that we would be facing an even more difficult situation, one in which I find myself leading us through a paralyzing and horrifying reality and hoping that we can survive and find a way to continue to be relevant for our communities.

Queens is the epicenter of the epicenter of the Covid-19 crisis in the US. Its neighbourhoods, specifically Elmhurst, Jackson Heights and Corona, where the museum is located, are among the most vulnerable in the five boroughs. Queens benefits from the diversity of people coming from all over the world to live here and has the highest percentage of foreign-born residents in New York City. They include many of our essential workers-they drive cabs, stock supermarkets, make and deliver food, they work in the gig economy and for many, their jobs do not offer health insurance, benefits or employment protection. Many are undocumented immigrants and work "off the books", they do not have the luxury of staying home and not working, they continue to commute from overcrowded housing to keep the city moving.

In Queens and beyond, we are all facing global, political and economic uncertainty. We are facing mass unemployment and recession, loss of friends, family members, jobs, homes. Ultimately, we are facing a collective sense of grief that we have never known before, along with a growing refugee crisis, and a deepening understanding of the impact of climate change.

We do not yet have the language for talking about this kind of grief, but perhaps we can hope that this collective experience can coalesce into a strengthened sense of care and commitment to the people, places, and ecosystems that inspire, nurture and sustain us. This is a time to consider museums as places of care-not just care of collections, but care of our communities, staff and artists-and the careful creation of spaces to make and express collective and individual experiences as we recover from living through a prolonged period of isolation and loss. Mediated digital intimacies create connections, but they also reinforce the importance of being present together and of physical connection. When we come back together, we will need to re-learn how to gather in and create civic and public places, and I believe that museums can play a significant role in this rebuilding.

More than ever then, there is a need to develop porous cultural institutions that are open, inclusive and empathetic. We need our galleries and museums to be unwavering in their commitment to maintaining spaces where human rights, diversity of opinion and creativity can thrive.

As we all try to understand and navigate the challenges of this new reality, we are working hard once again to plan and rethink how the Queens Museum will operate when we reopen. Our commitment to artists, education and our communities remains at the heart of the museum and we will spend the coming weeks working to understand how to remain a public space during this time. We are continuing to work at a distance using technology and we are developing digital content to share and activate our audiences. There are many things that need to be reconsidered-museums will reopen, but we do not yet know how the ways that people will gather and behave in public space will change.

Right now, many people in my neighbourhood are using the waterside park next to the East River as an almost silent and outdoor space where they are unconnected. We walk around in couples, family groups, some with their dogs, many alone. We navigate one another, masked and at a respectable distance, often speaking on phones, or listening to something on earphones-each in our own world. This reality is broken daily at 7pm as we all step out onto balconies, lean out of windows, stand in the street and cheer, bang pots and pans to thank the essential workers for keeping us safe in a moment of collective hope and gratitude. We come together again for another day.
* The writer is the president and executive director of the Queens Museum

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Notes from the lockdown: Making a situated museum in Queens

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Just one year ago, I came to live in New York as the director of the Queens Museum. Since I arrived, I have been working with our team to reimagine the museum in a way that will connect us even more deeply with our communities in Queens and beyond.