When COVID-19 numbers drop, museums may be one of the best places to re-enter the world with a lower degree of risk.

By Sean Collier

For much of 2020, the Mattress Factory was closed. Like all cultural institutions, the iconic North Side installation-art museum remained shuttered for several months in the early days of the pandemic, closing again as cases spiked in the early winter

If you happened to wander by the building on certain days, however, you would’ve found a strange sentinel maintaining the museum’s presence in the neighborhood: the Art Kit Cart.

Outside the museum’s doors, staff prepared and placed free MF Art Kits, available to neighbors on a first-come, first-serve basis. With hands-on, creative activities for younger kids and teens, the kits allowed the museum to continue outreach and engagement, even without any scrap of business as usual.

“It’s just been a nice way for people in the neighborhood to stop by, pick up a kit and do something tangible,” says Hayley A. Haldeman, the Mattress Factory’s interim executive director. “The ability to offer something that has physical resonance — I think that’s the model for what we’re looking to do on that local, community, and education level.”

Throughout 2020, museums found ways to engage when they were closed and adapted to encourage safe visits when they were open. Now, with the possibility of widespread vaccination on the horizon, these cultural stalwarts represent a safer return to the outside world for folks cautious about appropriate pandemic-era activities.

If you’re looking to plan a first outing on the road back to semi-normalcy, museums aren’t a bad bet.

Betsy Momich, the director of corporate communications at the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh — a group which includes the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History, the Warhol Museum and the Carnegie Science Center — points to the nature of a museum visit as inherently safer than many activities. 

“The spacious galleries and exhibition halls of our museums are ideal places to get inspired and uplifted by the wonders of art and science while also practicing social distancing,” she says. “Our museums can serve as a real respite right now.”

Plenty of experts have backed that perspective. Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, was quoted in the New York Times as speculating that museums may even be safer than grocery stores, pending a well-executed plan by museum staff. “Because you’re moving around, you’re improving your odds a little bit,” he told the Times. “If I had to go to one or another, I’d go to a museum over a movie theater.”

“We’re an optimal activity for when it’s safer and when there’s a greater percentage of individuals who are vaccinated,” Haldeman says. “We spent months reviewing and applying guidance from federal, state and local authorities — both government and public health,” as the Mattress Factory worked toward “adopting a plan that would keep our staff and visitors safe.”

That’s the plan the museum reopened with as restrictions were lifted over the summer: timed ticketing, strict capacity limits, universal mask usage and careful planning of interactions. In November, however, the Mattress Factory shut down again — in advance of re-instituted state restrictions — in response to the surge in COVID-19 cases nationwide.

“That was based on a number of factors,” Haldeman says, including “feeling that for our institution, given the variables we have, it was the responsible thing to do.

“We take very seriously that we’re in the middle of a residential neighborhood ... We want to make sure we’re setting a good example.”

Still, having to close again was another blow at the end of a financially devastating year for museums; even when open, revenues were nowhere near normal levels. At the Mattress Factory, salary cuts and budget cuts accompanied a furlough of front-line staff, though some of those employees were brought back for professional development throughout the initial closure. (Time for those sessions was a silver lining: “That’s something that would’ve been a dream for me, in the past, to do,” Haldemany says.”) The loss of patrons underlined that the Mattress Factory had become overly reliant on ticketing revenue; their 2020 budget assumed 45% of revenue would come through guest attendance, a high figure for museums. “There’s been a lot of adjustment on that. We have had to make some very difficult decisions.”

“In 2020, we recorded only about a third of the admissions of a typical year at our museums,” Momich says. “That definitely hurts. Being able to remain open to the public and welcome visitors is a hopeful thing for us.” The Carnegie Museums furloughed some staff members who were unable to work remotely in the spring; they’ve since brought “most” of those staffers back, and have had no additional furloughs since June.

Is there room for growth and positive change among such circumstances? As has been the case with many arts organizations, museums have embraced and enhanced digital offerings, a pivot that not only keeps institutions in the minds of patrons but also increases reach. At The Frick Pittsburgh, online programming has been able to highlight the treasures of the famous Frick art collection as well as the museum’s Car and Carriage Museum.

“During the spring and early summer closure, our audience took advantage of our diverse virtual offerings and enthusiastically participated in online programs,” says Elizabeth E. Barker, the Frick’s executive director. Those offerings “have attracted participants from the greater Pittsburgh area as well as from across the United States, Europe, Australia, and Asia.”

“Our museums did what they do best,” Momich says. “They got creative and thoughtful about what additional virtual experiences they could offer that would give remote visitors a chance to still love their museums, still engage with museum experts, and still get up-close with museum collections.”

Haldeman sees lessons even among the changes forced by pandemic-era operations: With limits on attendance, more patrons got to experience the museum’s installation art free of distractions. “You generally have a full room to take in the space,” she says. “It’s actually a really enjoyable way to see the museum.

“A lot of visitors are commenting that there’s a contemplative aspecte to it — it’s almost meditative, depending on the exhibition.”

Smaller crowds, social distancing and an increase in online programming will continue to be business as usual for museums throughout 2021; even as vaccines are distributed, carefree mingling is still a long way off. Even as the Frick plans new exhibitions throughout 2021, “The pandemic has dictated a period of uncertainty for us all,” Barker says, “which requires that we all remain flexible and adapt to conditions as we continue to battle this public health crisis.”

“The uncertainty, I think, is the most exhausting part,” Haldeman concurs. Even the core work of opening a new show requires “a lot of grit and determination, figuring out what we could make work.

“We’ve tried to be as flexible as possible throughout this — that’s the one thing that we’ve all learned. Certainty is the one thing that no one can expect in 2020.”

This article, part of a series describing the state of the arts and culture scene in mid-pandemic, is supported by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.