Socially-distanced museums
A two-metre queuing marker at Bamburgh Castle, Northumberland, July 2020
It’s been a strange few months. Looking back, I’m not sure how my last post was so long ago as July. My only excuse is that, after returning from furlough, weekends were largely taken up with trips out to the seaside while we had the chance, and undertaken in a car meaning that I didn’t have my usual train journeys to muse and write blogs. That said, I have had the opportunity to visit a number of museums, galleries and heritage since reopening has slowly been allowed, so I thought it was high time for a post on those experiences.
The first, perhaps obvious, thing to say is that there have been many fewer people than usual in a gallery space on any of my visits. Social distancing requires fewer numbers. This is of course devastating to the finances of institutions if it continues into the long term, and also raises questions about who is still attending, and what this means for the crucial diversity of audiences. It does mean, however, that I have had a generally much more enjoyable visitor experience, able to see things properly and move around with space to spare, rather than ducking around other people’s heads or trudging in line from one work to another as is now so often the case in blockbuster exhibitions that have to be unpleasantly crammed to achieve their target sales.
The second thing to note is how creatively museums, galleries and heritage sites have risen to the challenges of a socially-distanced visit. Routes and signage have been adjusted, hand-sanitiser has been made liberally available, and ticket booking systems have largely been very straightforward (Eventbrite must be doing very well out of this situation). Staff have been helpful and courteous throughout. Shops and cafes have come up with inventive new processes and offers. I have also seen a wide-range of amusing and relevant signage, making the 2m rule relatable to the venue in question. I have felt safe, secure and put at ease in every site I have visited.
The downside of booking systems is, of course, that you have to book to get in. The main thing that I miss in a socially-distanced museum visit is the ability to be spontaneous. As life has opened up a little, it has been easier to make small plans for weekends, and I really miss being able to pop into a gallery with half an hour to wander, or make a plan to see an exhibition later in the day (not to mention the suspension of reciprocal museum entry for professionals, which is a real loss in an underpaid profession). I wonder what impact the need to book has had on visits to permanent collections versus temporary exhibitions?
Likewise, the one-way systems necessarily imposed in many exhibitions now make it harder to respond to the displays spontaneously and naturally, moving around other visitors to connect objects in your own way and move at your own pace. One of my favourite approaches is to go backwards through an exhibition revisiting favourite parts on reaching the end, which I miss doing at the moment, but perhaps means I linger more on my one journey through.
I wrote previously about the many digital exhibitions that emerged during lockdown and my responses to them. I hope that a related digital offer for major exhibitions will become a permanent positive outcome of the pandemic as they give such a rich, complementary way into a show. These should not be simply an online replica, nor a trailer for the exhibition, but can be an inspiring companion offering content, voices and works that might not be available for the physical show. The best I have seen this done so far is The Botanical Mind online and on show at Camden Art Centre.
Of course, the exhibitions and experiences available to visit at the moment where all already in the planning, or even open, when the pandemic hit in March this year. The real question is how the ongoing changes to our lives will affect exhibition-making in the longer term: restricted budgets, inability to travel, smaller audiences, changing priorities. I have been lucky this year to be part of a group of Engagement Fellows working with curators in the USA, funded by the AAMC and Art Fund, and we felt this was a crucial topic for a webinar that we planned together in September. Watch my colleagues from China, the Czech Republic and the USA discuss what socially-distanced museums mean for them, now and in the future.