From Crosscut:
By Margo Vansynghel
September 1, 2020
On a recent afternoon, the Nordic National Museum wakes up in a dream that lasted nearly six months.Outside, a landscaper redefines vegetation in orderly archipelagoes.Inside, logger and collection specialist Kaia Wahmanholm turns through the giant fjord space, moving a ladder, lighting a video screen, adding decals on the floor to remind others of social estating.She then consciously rolls 3 10-foot-long Viking boats into the central lobby, now divided into one-way corridors through black chandeliers with retractable belts.
“We seem to be about to embark on something completely new,” Wahmanholm says, “like the grand opening we made in 2018.”Except, of course, this time it’s different. The reopening of a museum in the middle of the pandemic means navigating completely uncharted waters.
When the Nordic National Museum closed on March 13 to help curb the spread of coronavirus, it will be one of the last primary museums in Seattle’s domain to do so.On Friday, he will be the first to reopen the public, with a Scandinavian fad.exhibition that has not been open to the public since its March episode. Also on display: a multitude of protection precautions against coronaviruses, adding one-way corridors, hand sanitization stations and social distance decals that dot the ground.
Like many museums in Washington state, the Nordic National Museum has been on hold for months, circling an opening imaginable in Phase 3 of the state’s safe start plan.The museum sector was able to disembark on August 20, when Governor Jay Inslee legalized the museums they will open “before” as a component of Phase 2.Now, at the end of what is historically its peak season, The Museums of King and other Phase 2 counties can reopen, but only at 25% of their capacity.
The announcement came at a time when museums around the world are facing severe budget shortages and, for some, the prospect of permanent closure.
“It didn’t come too soon,” Karen Hanan, executive director of the Washington State Art Commission, said of Inslee’s announcement.”The Seattle Museum of Art, the Flight Museum, the Nordic Museum, all fired or fired a lot of people.”says Hanan, who oversaw the industry’s efforts to obtain permission to reopen before Phase 3.With federal payment check coverage program loans, emergency budget and operating capital depleting, “more licenses, more unemployment, more sources of lost income [were] coming,” she says.
The losses have already been devastating. But for now, Hanan says, the shipment has drifted away from an iceberg moment. Reopening to limited capacity means museums can spawn and fire and begin reviving the gift shop and promoting flat tickets.
Timed entrances, i.e. the stepped front is one of the biggest tricks of social estification in the museum’s new playbook, with one-way corridors to the clashes (so that this first portrait is not re-appreciated).sure that visitors don’t get too close to art, or others.
Some art lovers may object to the concept of being funneled into a museum like the crowds at the airport, but Seattle Art Museum Director and CEO Amada Cruz sees at least one advantage: “There will be fewer people in the galleries. “he says.” It might be a much more fun experience. “
Although the governor has issued express guidelines, adding the mandatory use of a mask for each visitor to the museum for 2 years, many museums need it with additional measures.The Seattle Museum of Art has closed its cloakroom, removed published cards and spaced art labels to prevent others from combining to read them.”It sounds silly, but that’s the kind of thing we want to think about now,” Cruz said.
One thing the art museum didn’t have to think about to hide the symptoms that said “Please touch.”This is precisely what the Pop Culture Museum (MoPOP) had to do with its 3-d published art that reproduces tattoos, an interactive detail of the existing exhibition on tattoo culture.
As a highly interactive museum, MoPOP has had to reconsider its entire approach, implementing more than a hundred adjustments to the speed of the exhibition.Have you ever sought to play the 1959 Gibson Les Paul Cherry Sunburst guitar?Start making a blues song. His speed put him in reserve.In the Fantasy Worlds of Myth and Magic exhibition, the plastic pine needles strewn on the gallery floor to give a mystical forest feel were swept away, some other surface to which the virus may adhere.Headphones are also prohibited. Sound and video will now play automatically when visitors approach, thanks to a proximity trigger.
Other museums have also had to be creative. When the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian-Pacific American Experience reopens late this fall, you may not find the sticky notes or sheets of paper you use for public participation.Instead, museum staff inspire visitors to verbally respond to others they are with (such as “How do you identify?”), until the museum can invest in interactive virtual and contactless options.
It is a replacement for museums that have become accustomed to adding interactive elements to each of the exhibits: a return to a more passive delight and an reversal of the trend towards touch screens in each of the exhibits.
Museums will run with one hand tied behind your back for a while, says Seattle-based museum representative Susie Wilkening.”But,” he says, “when it comes to museums for kids and science,” where everything interacts with exhibits, “I’d say either hand ties your back.”
For some, commitment doesn’t value it. Last week, the Tacoma Children’s Museum, which features interactive game scenes, announced that it would not reopen until next year.In Seattle, the Pacific Science Center also plans to keep its exhibits closed to the public for the time being.”The legal responsibility of ‘Don’t touch’ provides the interactive practical reports consumers expect from us,” a PacSci spokesman told Crosscut.
Although they do not incorporate hands-on experiences, many museums face a similar complicated choice: from non-contact thermometers to new exposure technology, it is a serious monetary seasoning with no guarantee that the public will return.
“There is enormous monetary attention to make all these paintings to reopen safely,” Wilkening says.”For virtually all museums, [the cost] will be higher than admissions that can expect to be obtained at a capacity of 25%.”
“Hope” is the key here. Many members of the museum industry say they do not expect the number of visitors to succeed even at 25% of their previous capacity.Attendance at the Seattle Aquarium and Zoo, each of which has been open for longer and has exhibits, has remained well below this limit.
“Museums that have reopened across the country see that only 5% to 25% of visitors return,” the Tacoma Museum of Art said in a recent press release stating that it would remain closed for the foreseeable future, as well as other museums in Tacoma although keeping its doors closed is one way to help curb the spread of the virus He goes on to say, “Until many visitors feel safe returning to the Museum, it is also true that we are involved in the wisdom of reopening now.”
Sadie Thayer, president of the Washington Museum Association and director of the Kittitas County Historical Museum in Ellensburg, confirms the trend at her museum, which has been open (phase 3) since last June.”We won’t see a rush back to museums, ” he says.”In my own institution, we see other people enter, but it’s a network, not a flood.”
A lot will have the comfort point, says Wilkening, the museum’s consultant.Her studies suggest that visitors have what she calls “individual hierarchies” in spaces that seem less risky.”Botanical gardens feel very safe, while a small children’s museum probably doesn’t feel so safe, as there are many small spaces and a lot of practical work,” he says.”SAM would probably feel very safe, it has large rooms.Guided tours to a small old site, not so much.”
However, cultural organizations founded on exhibitions across the country (whether museums, aquariums, zoos or science centers) can expect a 63% drop in attendance by 2020, according to cultural knowledge researcher Colleen Dilenschneider, and it probably won’t be like this for some time.Even without a new wave of closures, he predicts attendance will not return to 2019 grades until 2022.And even with a vaccine, “museums are unlikely to simply pick up where they left off in terms of attendance,” he says..
If they reopen. Without a primary inlet of personal money or more government bailouts, Wilkening estimates that between 20% and 25% of American museums will never reopen.”Right now, in terms of museum money, it’s still very dark,” he says.”The prestige quo is devastating.”
Museum experts say smaller institutions, which are the priority of Washington State’s six hundred museums, are at risk, according to museum experts; many of them are heritage organizations that do not have donors or major sponsorships and depend on the strength of the volunteers., tickets and sales in gift shops to stay afloat.Some of these museums were not eligible for first-round investment or aid loans and would possibly not rely on volunteers to reopen.
Thayer of the Washington Museum Association is sent to the Bellingham Railway Museum, which closed permanently in June, and fears others will follow it.What if we lost more of our small museums and, with them, cultural artifacts that tell stories about communities across the state?”Is it going to be a garage sale?” asks, wondering where the collections end.”When we lose some of these museums, [it’s] an irreplaceable cultural heritage,” Thayer says.”Communities would lose a genuine component of themselves.”
The Nordic National Museum will reopen on Friday four September and will be open from Wednesday to Sunday. Currently in sight: Gudrun Sjodén – A universe.
The Flight Museum will reopen on Saturday five September and will be open from Friday to Monday, Monday 21 September and Thursday to Monday, Thursday 24 September.
The Seattle Museum of Art is open on Friday, September 11 and will be open on Sunday.Currently in sight: stored objects, classes of the Institute of Empathy and more.
The Bellevue Museum of Art plans to reopen before the end of September with two new exhibitions, America’s Monsters, Superheroes and Villains and Never Odd or Even, an exhibition featuring paintings by Seattle glass artist Anna Mlasowsky.
The Wing Luke Museum plans to reopen to the public on Wednesday, October 7.She currently stars: Hear Us Rise: APA Voices in Feminism, I Am Filipino and more.
The Frye Museum of Art plans to reopen in mid-October.Spring 2020 exhibitions Agnieszka Polska: Love Bite, Subspontaneous: Francesca Lohmann and Rob Rhee, and Unsettling Femininity: Selections from the Frye Art Museum Collection will be presented.
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