From DW
The global cultural scene has taken a massive beating from the COVID-19 pandemic. But in New York, two of the world’s leading museums are now opening their doors again: the Met and the MoMA.
Following the coronavirus pandemic lockdown on March 13, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) looked toward reopening in early July. “At the time, it seemed by many to be a drastically pessimistic forecast,” Max Hollein, director of the famous museum, explained. “Now, of course, we realize that that was extremely optimistic.”
In fact, New York has been one of the largest COVID-19 hotspots in the world. More than 32,000 infected people have died in the state, over 23,000 of them in New York City alone.
But with the reopening of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)on August 27 and the Met on August 29, some normalcy may be returning. Then again, nothing is really normal during an ongoing pandemic. Security checks at the entrances, maintaining minimum distances, a limited number of visitors, compulsory face masks and guided paths.
Yet one advantage, says Max Hollein, is that there are no “three objects” that the visitor absolutely must see and check off their list, unlike at the Louvre Museum in Paris. This helps to prevent massive crowds from building. But the director of the Met does not believe that there will be a huge stream of visitors in the near future anyway.
Museum eyes local tourism
Before the coronavirus outbreak, 7.4 million people a year came to the Met. The Manhattan art museum was founded in 1870 and is now the largest in the United States. Now Hollein expects three, at most four million visitors for the next 12 months.
“A third of our visitors used to come from abroad,” says Hollein. “I don’t think we will see a resurgence of tourism until a vaccine is found.
He and his team are therefore initially focusing on the local audience — although in the long term it is important to him that visitors come back from all over the world. “The Met is clearly not just a museum for New Yorkers,” stresses the 51-year-old. “And we will of course work hard to regain the Met’s main task of being a great encyclopedic museum for the world, and for all world citizens.”
But how long will it take for things to return to normal? Hollein is hoping two or three years. But even until then, the audience at the Met should feel comfortable:
“That it still feels like a visit to a museum,” he says. “That one has the feeling that one not only likes to be in this house, but also likes to be in company, even if one keeps distance to other people. But it is still a house for a community, that is very important for us.” Read more from DW
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