Closed Nearly a Year, Empty Museums in Los Angeles Struggle
Los Angeles-based museums have been closed since last March due to COVID-19 regulations. Despite the mandatory closures, many businesses and institutions across the country begin to reopen. Museum directors such as Hammer Museum director Ann Philbin are now calling on the city and local politicians to reconsider the strict rules these institutions have to abide by.
"Fulton Leroy Washington (known as Mr. Wash), who began to paint while serving time for a nonviolent drug offense, was looking forward to being part of the Hammer Museum’s biennial — his first museum show — before the pandemic forced the doors closed a few months before the exhibition was to open. “I started having excitement build up,” Washington said. “Then disappointment set in.”
Credit...Joshua White The show, “Made in L.A. 2020,” was installed in June, and is still in place. But the public has not been allowed inside to see it.
Los Angeles, where the coronavirus pandemic has been particularly severe, is the largest city in the nation whose museums have yet to reopen even temporarily since the pandemic struck last March. The prolonged closure is costing its museums millions of dollars a day in lost revenues, and setting the city back at a crucial moment when an influx of artists and galleries and an expanding museum scene had prompted some to pronounce Los Angeles the contemporary art world’s creative center." - Robin Pogrebien, Feb 10. 2021
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the New York Times website.
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