Museum Response

How Museums are Adapting to COVID-19

For as long as they have existed, art museums have brought people together through a shared interest in learning about the arts. Since the pandemic, museums have taken extreme measures not only to ensure their community’s safe return but also keeping them engaged. They have adapted abruptly to this new territory that we are all learning to navigate day-by-day. We are seeing that many museums are taking steps toward reopening, or have already reopened, but at the beginning of the pandemic, physical locations were closed to the public with their health and safety in mind. However, that doesn’t mean these organizations weren’t engaging with their communities. Even with their physical locations closed, museums of all kinds were offering free online learning resources, access to their digital collections, virtual tours, and online exhibits—all invaluable opportunities to educate and connect people across the world.

Here are some ways art museums have been responding to the pandemic, and what that means for the future of these institutions.

Museums have long been institutions of informal learning. Now more than ever students have become familiar with informal/online learning. For many, online learning is a new experience for them, a new experience being shared by museums. Today, students can continue learning away from the classroom through hundreds of online resources that museums are offering. There’s no shortage of topics, from animal habitats and science to art history and wildlife biology and architecture. A myriad of topics have been made available to students, and that includes “students” like you and I. But there are museums like the Children’s Museum of Houston, the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, and the New York Hall of Science which are offering age-specific resources for younger museum-goers. 

Finally, the Museum Computer Network (MCN) has created an exhaustive list of hundreds of other virtual resources from museums.

Museums are offering many virtual engagement opportunities, such as tours, online art, and guided digital experiences to stay connected with their communities.

  • Located in Washington D.C. the Smithsonian Institution  is providing virtual gallery tours of its museums, educational resources, and webcasts. More than 1,000 other museums from across the world are also offering virtual tours.
  • Located in Tulsa, OK, The Philbrook Museum is sharing images of the museum and its collections and engaging its community with art related discussions and a concert series on social media.
  • The Cincinnati Zoo is producing daily home safari videos for people to get to know the animals that live there.
  • The New York Botanic Garden is sharing the beauty of spring in the garden through their NYBG at Home that includes virtual garden walks and a plant talk blog.

In addition to boosting online learning resources, such as story times, history activities, and audiovisual exhibits, many museums are supporting state emergency response efforts during this crisis. Take History Colorado and its member museums, for example:

  • El Pueblo History Museum is a Grab and Go lunch site for Pueblo City Schools. They are collecting donated supplies and delivering to community elders, in collaboration with Pueblo’s Catholic Charities.
  • Fort Garland Museum is a Community Access Site for San Luis Valley college students who need digital connection to attend college classes that have moved to remote learning.
  • Five of History Colorado’s museums across the state—History Colorado Center, El Pueblo, Trinidad, Fort Garland, and Ute Indian Museum—are working with the Colorado Department of Higher Education to serve as drop off sites for donated laptops for students who lack the tech equipment necessary for remote learning.
  • History Colorado is among the many institutions, donating masks and gloves in supplies for the medical effort.
  • The Michigan Museums Association has started weekly online Colleague Chats to keep the Michigan museum community connected.
  • The Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts is offering online presentations on a range of conservation and preservation topics.
  • The International Coalition of Sites of Conscience has a weekly email to inspire innovation during this difficult time, sharing ideas, recommending resources related to creative cultural programming, and providing quick links to self-care ideas.

You can search for more opportunities on social media with #museumsfromhome.

“Facing Challenge with Resilience: How Museums Are Responding During COVID-19.” Institute of Museum and Library Services, 10 July 2020, www.imls.gov/blog/2020/04/facing-challenge-resilience-how-museums-are-responding-during-covid-19.