How to Be a Receptionist at an Art Museum
Without a dubiety, the COVID-19 pandemic changed the way audiences view art. From virtual tours and talks to meditative, educational livestreams, museums and other cultural institutions found unique means to go on would-be guests engaged from the comfort of their living rooms. And although many of us developed serious cases of screen fatigue later sheltering in place and weathering regional lockdowns, when it came to experiencing alive music, it was hard to imagine a socially distanced twist on concerts or shows that felt both rubber and wholly engaging.
Only the shift we experienced during the pandemic hasn't stopped with how we experience art. The ways creatives make fine art and tell stories accept been — volition exist — irrevocably altered as a upshot of the pandemic. While it might feel like it's "too soon" to create art about the pandemic — virtually the loss and feet or even the glimmers of hope — it's clear that art volition surface, sooner or after, that captures both the world equally it was and the world equally it is now. There is no "going back to normal" post-COVID-xix — and art volition undoubtedly reflect that.
How Did Museums, Galleries and Art Spaces Adapt to Pandemic Safety Measures?
When it comes to social distancing, the Mona Lisa is a pro. Located at the Louvre Museum in Paris, Leonardo da Vinci's dear Renaissance painting is displayed in a purpose-congenital, climate-controlled enclosure — complete with bulletproof drinking glass and several feet of infinite between its spot on the wall and the stanchion that holds legions of viewers back. On average, 6 one thousand thousand people view the Mona Lisa each twelvemonth, and while the painting is somewhat of an anomaly, large museums like the Louvre are inundated with throngs of visitors on a near-daily basis. Or, at least, that was true for these pop tourist sites before the novel coronavirus hit.
On July 6, the Louvre ended its xvi-week closure, allowing masked folks to mill nearly and take in works like Eugène Delacroix'southward Liberty Leading the People (in a higher place) from a distance. Unlike theaters, cinemas and concert halls, museums tend to exist meliorate equipped than other tourist hotspots to mitigate visitor contact and control crowds. It'south not uncommon for institutions with pop exhibits to found timed ticketing blocks or adjourn the number of guests that enter a gallery space at a time, even earlier social distancing requirements were put into identify. Those practices became even more important during reopening but before large-scale vaccine rollouts had begun taking identify.
Why brave the pandemic to run into the Mona Lisa then? For many folks in the art world, including the general managing director of Opera Memphis Ned Canty, going to a museum or art space was more than than just something to do to interruption upwards the monotony of sheltering in place. "[West]e will always desire to share that with someone next to us," Canty said. "Whether we know that person or not, that increases the value of the experience for anybody… Information technology is a basic human need that will non get away."
As the world's about-visited museum, the pre-COVID-nineteen Louvre welcomed 50,000 people a solar day, on boilerplate. In the summertime of 2020, the museum instituted mask and distancing requirements, an online-simply reservation system and a one-way path through the building. Visitors could no longer meander from slice to slice, and, over the summertime, thirty% of the Louvre remained airtight. According to NPR, the Louvre predictable 7,000 people on its first day back, and avid fans didn't allow information technology downwards: The museum sold all 7,400 available tickets for the grand reopening.
While that number is nowhere about fifty,000, information technology still felt like a large gathering of people, no thing the restrictions the museum had put in identify. It was certainly large by COVID-19 standards, to say the to the lowest degree, which is probably why the Louvre shuttered once again in tardily October in compliance with the French government's guidelines — and amidst a spike in positive COVID-19 cases. Although the museum has since reopened, mask mandates and social distancing rules have remained, and only the outdoor eateries have been opened.
What Have Nosotros Learned From the Art of Pandemics Past?
In the mid-14th century, the Black Death, an epidemic of the bubonic plague that swept through Eurasia and North Africa, killed between 75 meg and 200 million people. In response, Boccaccio penned The Decameron, a "human being one-act" virtually people who flee Florence during the Black Expiry and keep their spirits up by telling comedic, tragic and raunchy stories. It might take seemed strange in your college lit course, but, now, in the face of COVID-19 memes and TikTok videos, perhaps The Decameron's comedy-in-the-face-of-despair perfectly captured the zeitgeist?
Later on, in the wake of the 1918 flu pandemic, artist Edvard Munch painted Cocky Portrait Later on the Spanish Flu. Non unlike the selfies taken by tired, despairing healthcare professionals and overwhelmed COVID-19 survivors, Munch's cocky-portrait captured not only his jaundice but a sense of despair and nihilism. At a time when folks were dealing with the era'southward dual traumas — the end of World State of war I and 50 million deaths worldwide due to the 1918 influenza pandemic — it's no wonder the art earth shifted so drastically.
With this in heed, it's clear that by public health crises have shifted the aesthetics and intent of the work artists are moved to create. Non unlike in the early 20th century, we're living through a time of staggering modify. Non only take we had to fence with a health crisis, but in the United States, folks realized the power of protest in meaningful new ways past rallying behind the Black Lives Matter Movement; the fight for the rights and sovereignty of Indigenous peoples; trans and queer rights movements; and the fight against climatic change.
Why Was Information technology Important to Foster Art Spaces Outside of Museums and Galleries During the Pandemic?
The AIDS Crisis of the 1980s and 1990s — augmented by the silence and inaction from President Reagan and the Centers for Affliction Control and Prevention — devastated a generation, namely a generation of gay men, Black people, queer people of color and sexual activity workers. In improver to fighting for their public health concerns to be recognized in the midst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, activists were too fighting for human being rights. As such, myriad artists, including Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe, Andres Serrano, David Wojnarowicz and Nan Goldin (just to name a few), lent their work and voices to bring visibility to what the government was ignoring.
The intent backside these works varied: Some pieces were meant to document the epidemic, while others were meant to amplify silenced voices and underscore the humanity of folks fighting for their lives. The goal wasn't to brand museum-approved works. At present, during a time of immense change and disruption, we can however meet important, era-defining works of fine art emerging all around us.
In the wake of George Floyd's murder and the commencement wave of Black Lives Matter Protests in 2020, artists across the state — and even the globe — took to the streets to create murals dedicated to Floyd, to Black activists and to promoting radical change. In parks and public spaces all across the world, activists toppled statues and other monuments to racist and bigoted historical figures, making fashion for artists to immortalize new (and actual) heroes.
In improver to street art, artists and art collectives seized the opportunity to capture the general public'southward attending with other forms of protest art. In Brooklyn, New York's Bed-Stuy neighborhood, an anonymous group of artists installed a Black Lives Thing slice (above). In it, Black figures, covered in the names and images of Black men and women who have been murdered at the easily of police and because of white supremacy, make full a Fulton Street plaza.
Beyond the country, in Los Angeles, Mae and Sydni Wynter designed the temporary installation, Carry the Truth, at City Hall. The grassroots exhibition, fabricated upward of teddy bears property Black Lives Matter signs and sporting face up masks as acknowledgements of the COVID-19 pandemic, was meant to exist a "positive gateway for children to use their voices for change."
What's the Country of Art and Museums Now?
From murals on the sides of buildings to installations in public spaces, these works of fine art are accessible to all — there'due south no monetary barrier to entry, and they're in open spaces, which allowed folks navigating the pandemic to notwithstanding see them and still allows us to savour them as fully vaccinated people have resumed pre-pandemic activities. This isn't a new way of displaying or experiencing art by any means, but information technology certainly feels more important than ever. Museums take largely begun reopening their doors while maintaining safety measures, but, as with many other COVID-nineteen protocols, things seem to vary country-by-state. This may remain true for the foreseeable future, and policies may vary from museum to museum.
While museums may non be "essential" businesses or services, it's clear that in that location's a desire for art, whether it's viewed in-person or about. In the same way information technology'southward difficult to conceptualize what sorts of mediums or imagery will dominate post-COVID-19 art, information technology's difficult to say what will happen to museums in the coming months. One thing is clear, however: The art fabricated now will exist every bit revolutionary as this fourth dimension in history.
Source: https://www.ask.com/culture/ask-answers-covid19-pandemic-impact-art-museums?utm_content=params%3Ao%3D740004%26ad%3DdirN%26qo%3DserpIndex
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