Petition Calls for LA to Allow Indoor Museums to Reopen
Museums across the country are reopening with distancing protocols and other safety measures. However, L.A. museums have been shuttered since last March, which some say is detrimental to these cultural institutions and the community as a whole. A new campaign is seeking to bring these issues to light.
"Los Angeles museums large and small remain closed due to the pandemic, even while commercial galleries that display and sell art–and shopping malls, for that matter–have been allowed to reopen for indoor activity. Even retail shops at museums can have shoppers inside, even if those shoppers cannot then visit the rest of the attached museum. That feels unfair to some in the museum world, and now a petition campaign seeks to bring their concerns to local officials.
“When they opened up art galleries and indoor malls, I was like, ‘This does not feel right,’” Hammer Museum director Ann Philbin told The New York Times last month. “Our museums function as real places of respite and healing and inspiration—they help people a lot.”
In San Francisco, some large museums were briefly allowed to reopen in October, but shut back down amid a surge in COVID-19 cases. Today those museums announced they would begin opening back up on March 7, with new distancing and safety protocols in place.
But in Los Angeles, where the pandemic has had far greater impact, museums have remained fully shut since March. The closure is reportedly costing “millions of dollars a day in lost revenues” for the cultural institutions."— Brittany Martin, Mar. 2 2021
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Los Angeles Magazine website.
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