Face Masks Amid The Art: New York City’s Museums To Reopen

A man walks past a banner by artist Yoko Ono at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thursday, Aug. 20, 2020, in New York. Ono's two banners on the front of the museum say "Dream Together." The museum will reopen to the public on Aug. 29, 2020. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

NEW YORK (AP) — When the iconic T. Rex at the American Museum of Natural History again welcomes visitors, it will gaze down at humans acting a bit differently.

They will still gape up at its massive skeleton, but there will be fewer of them. They’ll stand farther apart and wear masks. Other pandemic precautions will include hand sanitizer stations and one-way signs guiding guests through exhibits.

The museum is like many cultural institutions in the city gingerly reopening their doors, weighing the safety of visitors and staff with the need to educate, inspire and support New York’s recovery.

“We have to re-imagine and re-engineer the museum visit,” says museum President Ellen Futter. “We want to fulfill our civic mission. And we think that our mission has never been more important.”

New York City was by far the hardest-hit U.S. city by the pandemic. It’s also home to world-class cultural institutions that have for decades — and city leaders hope will once again — draw millions.

The Museum of Modern Art opens Thursday, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art reopens its Upper East Side home on Saturday. The American Museum of Natural History plans to reopen to the public Sept. 9.

City museums will institute a range of precautions, including reduced hours, reserved tickets, mandating masks, limiting attendance to a quarter of capacity, and closing movie theaters, coat rooms and food courts.

Some of the new rules might make future trips to a museum less spontaneous and escapist, but there are some benefits.

“It’s true that it will be less crowded. It also will be more intimate and it may give people a different view of things. I don’t think that will diminish in the least the sense of the visit,” said Futter.

Other institutions need a bit more time. The Guggenheim will reopen on Oct. 3, while the 9/11 Memorial Museum will reopen on the anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

Whether anyone will come is the big question.

“There are a lot of unknowns out there. We don’t know whether people will feel comfortable coming back. We don’t know whether they’ll feel comfortable being with several hundred people indoors, even if we’re a very large space,” said Glenn Lowry, MoMA’s director.

“We ardently believe that people will want to come back to museums and to see the things that are both familiar and unfamiliar — see the things that animate their mind, that make them feel alive.”

Welcoming back visitors is also a chance to end months of lost ticket sales. Each facility has different financial models but for those that rely heavily on attendance, the pandemic has been crippling. The Natural History Museum alone has lost as much as $120 million.

While MoMA is looking at “significant losses” for up to three years, it has decided not to charge visitors for the first month. “It just felt like the right gesture,” said Lowry. “I think once you’ve lost a lot of money, losing a little bit more isn’t really the big issue.”

To add to the financial burden, most museums have been forced to pay for safety upgrades, like more staff, touchless bathrooms and costly air filtration systems.

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“Every institution is having to look long and hard at their financial model and scale back, postponing and canceling programs and events while simultaneously pushing forward on all fundraising cylinders,” said Regan Grusy, vice president of strategic partnerships at the New Museum.

The pandemic hit only a few months after MoMA reopened in October following a $450 million expansion. Back then, visitors were greeted in the lobby with an enormous Haim Steinbach banner that read: “Hello. Again.” It’s been replaced: Now they’ll see a Milton Glaser piece that reads “I (HEART) NY.”

“This is a moment to assert the resurgence of New York,” said Lowry. “New York has gone from this huge magnet of tourism to being a city that’s just about itself because the tourists aren’t around. So with all of that, we felt this was a more powerful welcome.”

The Metropolitan Museum of Art was one of the first in the city to close and, with no federal guidance, stepped up to help lead a working group of about 25 museums in the city sharing information and creating protocols.

“The question we all face is, ‘How long will we have to limit the numbers of visitors?’ If the answer is ‘Five years,’ it would be devastating,” said Met President and CEO Daniel Weiss.

His institution has even taken on COVID-19 with art: The Met sells face masks with floral details from paintings in its collection by Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh. “We’re trying to make the best of it,” said Weiss.

The Corona neighborhood in Queens was one the hardest-hit sections of the hardest-hit city. Yet it is home to a museum not built for pandemics — the hands-on, highly interactive New York Hall of Science.

The Hall prides itself on being a place where children engage with the exhibits — controlling mock space rovers, exploring digital environments and experimenting with circuits. It is not willing to change its goals and go touchless or remove exhibitions. It hopes to reopen next spring.

“We’re not going to back off of our core approach and core methodology,” said Margaret Honey, president and CEO. “We believe that the world will return to doing those kinds of activities when it’s safe to do so. And when it’s safe to do so is really going to depend on vaccines and treatments. And, of course, a willing public.”

Though the doors are closed, the Hall hasn’t been silent. It’s helped donate thousands of meals, turned a parking lot into a drive-in movie theater, encouraged research and hosted a mobile testing site on campus.

Like many museums, it has put many new resources and access to its offerings online, accelerating a pre-pandemic trend.

“This is the time to think about the limitless possibilities when time and space mean something completely different,” said Grusy.

When the Hall of Science does open, it will have a new exhibit exploring the different ways cultures experience happiness.

It will be called The Happiness Experiment, and Honey is tickled by the notion. “I love the idea of reopening with an exhibit that’s focusing on happiness.”

Over in Manhattan, the silent T. Rex at the Natural History museum may actually put the pandemic into perspective. It reminds visitors they are part of a churning evolution.

“We’ve seen great challenges and really deeply disturbing times before, but we’ll get through this,” said Futter. “And the museum reopening is part of that for us, for our visitors and for the city. And we’re very excited about it.”

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Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

MoMA Reopens With More Space, Fresh Juxtapositions

This undated image released by the The Museum of Modern Art shows the installation "Artist’s Choice: Amy Sillman—The Shape of Shape," part of the renovation and expansion effort at MoMA in New York. As the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan prepares to reopen following a $450 million, 47,000 square foot expansion, visitors can prepare for much more than much-needed elbow room there - and new juxtapositions of works meant to encourage broader perspectives and new narratives. (Heidi Bohnenkamp/MoMA via AP)

Contributed by KATHERINE ROTH

NEW YORK (AP) — The Museum of Modern Art’s new $450 million, 47,000-square-foot expansion offers visitors more than much-needed elbow room. It emphasizes new juxtapositions of works to encourage broader perspectives and new narratives.

The revamped MoMA, a third bigger than the old one, opens to the public on Oct. 21.

While iconic works by the likes of Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso and Pollock remain dependably on view, visitors are invited to see them in a new light, now displayed side by side with less familiar works by women and minorities, and artists from places like Africa, South America and Asia.

The goal is to rethink the familiar and make Modernism feel fresh and challenging again.

“Sometimes even small juxtapositions can have a big impact,” says Jodi Hauptmann, senior curator of drawings and prints at MoMA. “On the fifth floor, for example, Van Gogh’s ‘The Starry Night’ is now shown in the same gallery as a collection of ceramics made at the same time by George Ohr, of Biloxi, Mississippi. It’s interesting to see those things together.”

Picasso’s 1907 “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” now shares gallery space with a 1967 painting by African-American artist Faith Ringgold featuring an interracial gunfight. Seeing the two works together provides fresh perspective on both, and seems to emphasize the violence of Picasso’s fractured bodies.

“Inspired by Alfred Barr’s original vision to be an experimental museum in New York, the real value of this expansion is not just more space, but space that allows us to rethink the experience of art in the museum,” says Glenn D. Lowry, director of MoMA.

To keep creating fresh juxtapositions, offer up more of the museum’s permanent collection, and place greater focus on multiculturalism, the revamped MoMA promises to rotate many of the works in its galleries every six months.

“It’s an opportunity to show visitors what the museum has been doing in terms of collecting these past years,” says Michelle Elligott, chief of archives, library and research collections.

In some of the galleries, sculpture, painting, design, architecture, photography and film are all featured together.

“We have now brought various departments into conversation, which allows visitors to explore what different artists were doing during the same time period,” says Martino Stierli, chief curator of architecture and design at the museum.

Other galleries continue to focus on a single medium. Explains Juliet Kinchin, curator in the department of architecture and design: “Each floor has a broad chronological frame, but within each frame there’s more flexibility, with occasional breakouts to create a dialogue.”

“We’re trying to have some areas that are fully integrated in terms of departments, and other areas where you can really focus solely on a particular medium,” she says.

To help alleviate crowds, MoMA now has more ways to reach the galleries, including through a new wing on the west side.

The expansion, developed by MoMA with architects Diller Scofidio and Benfro in collaboration with Gensler, also includes a larger ground floor — including two new galleries — that is free and open to the public.

There is aIso a new studio space for live and experimental programming, including music, sound, spoken word and expanded approaches to the moving image.

“The idea is that the museum will now be a more engaging destination for both repeat visitors, as well those visiting the museum for the first time,” says Elligott.

MoMA To Open NY Exhibit On Latin American Architecture

Associated Press

In this Feb. 6, 2012 , photo provided by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Bank of London and South America in Buenos Aires, Argentina is shown. The image is part of a Museum of Modern Art exhibit called “Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955-1980” that will be shown from March 29 to July 19th, 2015 at the museum in New York. (AP Photo/Museum of Modern Art, Fabio Grementieri)

A new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City will explore the architectural landscape of Latin America between 1955 and 1980.

The show features more than 500 works that have mostly never been exhibited, including architectural drawings and models, vintage photographs and films.

Some of the buildings examined include The Bank of London and South America in Buenos Aires, Argentina and The Plaza of the Three Powers in Brasilia, Brazil.

Museum representatives on Tuesday said the exhibit reveals the urban development in the region during a time of complex political shifts.

The exhibit, titled "Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955-1980" will open March 29.

Admission To NY Matisse Show At The Museum of Modern Art Will Be By Timed Tickets, Available Online

 (AP) - A Matisse exhibition that drew big crowds in London is opening soon at New York City's Museum of Modern Art.

In anticipation of a large turnout, MoMa is issuing timed tickets for admission to "Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs."

They're available online, www.moma.org/, and at the museum and are free with the price of a regular admission.

The exhibition runs Oct. 12 through Feb. 8. It was shown at the Tate Modern in London before coming to MoMA.

The cut-outs were created largely in the last decade of the French artist's life when he was recovering from cancer and unable to paint.

Henri Matisse used scissors and paper to create a series of big, bold and ambitious cutouts. Some are mural or room-size, including "The Swimming Pool," which MoMA acquired in 1975.

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