Museums Around World Opening After COVID19 - Springs 2020

Museum Openings

1. PARIS (AFP).- The Louvre museum in Paris, home to the Mona Lisa, is to reopen on July 6 after the government allowed French museums and historic sites to reopen their doors following the coronavirus shutdown, it said Friday. France is to further ease restrictions imposed to combat the virus from Tuesday but it will only be in July that many top museums and attractions reopen, although some plan to do so in June. Culture Minister Franck Riester confirmed Friday that wearing a mask would be obligatory for visiting a museum in France while some will have to impose prior reservation systems to avoid a heavy influx of visitors. "The implementation of a reservation system as well as new signs will allow us to offer maximum safety to our visitors, in addition to wearing a mask and respecting social distancing," the Louvre said in a statement. It added that online reservations for visiting the Louvre when it reopens on July 6 would open on June 15. The Louvre has been closed since March 13. "Even if we were able to discover the treasures of the Louvre in a virtual way during the lockdown, nothing can replace the emotion of meeting a work in a real way," said the Louvre's director Jean-Luc Martinez. "This is the raison-d'etre of museums." "We all need a meeting with art that is sensitive and real. A meeting with art, with beauty, can heal our souls," he added. After the success of its blockbuster Leonardo exhibition which closed earlier this year, the Louvre said its two exhibitions scheduled for spring and then postponed would now take place in the autumn. These are on Italian sculpture from Donatello to Michaelangelo and the renaissance German master Albrecht Altdorfer. The Louvre has upped its virtual presence during the lockdown and said it was now the most followed museum in the world on Instagram with over four million followers. For other sites, the former royal residence the Chateau de Versailles outside Paris will open on June 6 while the Musee d'Orsay of impressionist masterworks will open from June 23, the ministry of culture said. The iconic Pompidou Centre for modern art in Paris will reopen on July 1. https://artdaily.cc/news/124075/Paris-Louvre-museum-to-reopen-July-6-after-virus-closure#.XtP14KhKhsA

2. NEW YORK (AFP).- The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York said Tuesday it hopes to reopen in mid-August or a few weeks later with reduced visiting hours and no guided tours so as to encourage social distancing. Closed since March 13, this is the first major museum in the city to announce a date for reopening, even though Governor Andrew Cuomo has yet to say when the Big Apple will get back to business with an easing of coronavirus lockdown measures. His plan calls for a reopening in four phases in each region of New York state. Resuming cultural activities is allowed only in phase four. New York City has yet to be allowed to undertake even phase one. Besides the scaled-back visiting hours and lack of guided tours, the Met also said it will hold off from offering lectures or concerts until late 2020 so as to avoid large gatherings that could spread the coronavirus. With the reopening, an exhibit called "Making the Met" celebrating the institution's 150th anniversary will finally get underway. It had been due to start March 30. "As we endure these challenging and uncertain times, we are encouraged by looking forward to the day when we can once again welcome all to enjoy The Met’s collection and exhibitions," museum president Daniel Weiss said. In mid-March, Weiss and museum director Max Hollein forecast losses of nearly $100 million this year because of the lockdown, assuming the museum reopened in July, according to an internal document quoted by The New York Times. https://artdaily.cc/news/123767/Met-museum-in-New-York-aims-to-open-in-mid-August-after-lockdown#.XtP6VahKhsA

3. MADRID (AFP).- The halls are eerily quiet at Madrid's Reina Sofia, Spain's most visited museum, as a solitary art restorer looks after its star attraction -- Pablo Picasso's anti-war masterpiece "Guernica". Like all of Spain's museums, the modern art museum housed in a former hospital has been closed since mid-March due to a nationwide lockdown to contain one of the world's deadliest coronavirus outbreaks. But with the restrictions starting to be eased, it is getting ready to reopen -- hopefully in a month -- with new social distancing and hygiene regulations in place for the pandemic age. Museums must "convey the message that there is no need to fear others," said the Reina Sofia's director, Manuel Borja-Villel. Visitors will move through the multi-story building on a circular path so as not to cross by one another, cameras will take people's temperature and dispensers for hand sanitiser will be distributed across the museum, he told AFP. Paper maps and brochures will no longer be available as they can transmit germs, and visitors will instead be able to download an info app on their own smartphones. "There will be nothing that people can touch," said Borja-Villel. After weeks of confinement, visiting museums can help to revive public life, he added. "It is important to transmit this joy of being with others, this idea that human beings, by definition, are not alone," he said. Less big exhibitions? The Reina Sofia received 4.4 million visitors in 2019, half of them from outside Spain, but it fears it will see a 30 percent fall in revenues this year because of the coronavirus lockdown. The government has ordered museums to restrict admissions to a third of their capacity when they do re-open to ensure social distancing rules are respected. Borja-Villel predicts museums will have to move away from their current model based on holding a series of "big exhibitions" and adopt a more long-term strategy. While the Reina Sofia is closed to the public, restoration work continues. "We must remain to ensure works remain in good shape," said the museum's chief restorer, Jorge Garcia Gomez-Tejedor, who wore a face mask as he inspected "Guernica", the emblematic painting depicting the horrors of Spain's 1936-39 civil war. The Reina Sofia, along with the nearby Prado and the Thyssen museums, form a so-called "Golden Triangle of Art" which is one of the Spanish capital's top tourism draws. Digital transformation The Prado -- Spain's national museum which is home to paintings by Spanish masters such as El Greco, Velazquez and Goya -- fears a 70 percent drop in revenues this year, said its communications director Carlos Chaguaceda. Around 60 percent of its visitors are foreigners, with a significant number from the United States, he added. The Prado was already forced to reschedule all of the temporary exhibitions it had planned for this year due to problems in receiving loans of works from other museums during the pandemic, which has brought air traffic to a halt. At the Thyssen, the pandemic has been "a trigger for the digital transformation" at the institution, said its executive director, Evelio Acevedo. During the lockdown the museum boosted the amount of its online content, by for example providing a virtual tour of a temporary exhibition of portraits by Dutch master Rembrandt led by the show's curator. The "Rembrandt and Amsterdam portraiture" exhibition opened on February 18 and had initially been set to run until May 24, but it will likely now be extended to the end of August. This sort of free online content won't stem an expected 60 percent drop in revenues this year but they are helping to launch "a transformation process that will last years," said Acevedo. https://artdaily.cc/news/123300/Spain-s-Reina-Sofia-museum-prepares-to-reopen-in-pandemic-era#.XtQDc6hKhsA