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How to Write an Essay on an Art Piece in a Museum

Bear the Truth, a temporary art installation at Urban center Hall in Los Angeles, is meant to be a "positive gateway for children to utilise their voices for change." Designed past Mae and Sydni Wynter; June 28, 2020. Credit: Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Tim

Without a doubt, the COVID-19 pandemic changed the way audiences view fine art. From virtual tours and talks to meditative, educational livestreams, museums and other cultural institutions institute unique ways to keep would-be guests engaged from the comfort of their living rooms. And although many of u.s.a. developed serious cases of screen fatigue after sheltering in place and weathering regional lockdowns, when it came to experiencing live music, information technology was hard to imagine a socially distanced twist on concerts or shows that felt both safety and wholly engaging.

Simply the shift we experienced during the pandemic hasn't stopped with how nosotros experience art. The ways creatives make art and tell stories have been — will be — irrevocably altered as a result of the pandemic. While information technology might feel like it'southward "too presently" to create art about the pandemic — virtually the loss and anxiety or even the glimmers of hope — it's clear that art will surface, sooner or later, that captures both the world equally it was and the world equally it is at present. There is no "going back to normal" post-COVID-19 — and art volition undoubtedly reverberate that.

How Did Museums, Galleries and Art Spaces Adapt to Pandemic Safety Measures?

When information technology comes to social distancing, the Mona Lisa is a pro. Located at the Louvre Museum in Paris, Leonardo da Vinci's beloved Renaissance painting is displayed in a purpose-built, climate-controlled enclosure — complete with bulletproof glass and several feet of space between its spot on the wall and the stanchion that holds legions of viewers back. On average, 6 million people view the Mona Lisa each year, and while the painting is somewhat of an bibelot, big museums like the Louvre are inundated with throngs of visitors on a nearly-daily basis. Or, at least, that was truthful for these popular tourist sites before the novel coronavirus hit.

On July 6, visitors wearing protective face masks are seen at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France, as it reopens its doors following its sixteen-week closure due to lockdown measures acquired by the COVID-nineteen pandemic. Credit: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

On July half-dozen, the Louvre ended its 16-week closure, allowing masked folks to mill about and take in works like Eugène Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People (above) from a altitude. Dissimilar theaters, cinemas and concert halls, museums tend to exist better equipped than other tourist hotspots to mitigate visitor contact and control crowds. It's not uncommon for institutions with pop exhibits to institute timed ticketing blocks or adjourn the number of guests that enter a gallery space at a time, even before social distancing requirements were put into place. Those practices became fifty-fifty more than of import during reopening but before big-scale vaccine rollouts had begun taking place.

Why brave the pandemic to see the Mona Lisa then? For many folks in the art earth, including the full general director of Opera Memphis Ned Canty, going to a museum or art space was more just something to do to intermission up the monotony of sheltering in place. "[W]due east volition e'er want to share that with someone adjacent to us," Canty said. "Whether nosotros know that person or not, that increases the value of the experience for everyone… Information technology is a basic human need that volition not go away."

Every bit the earth's most-visited museum, the pre-COVID-19 Louvre welcomed 50,000 people a 24-hour interval, on boilerplate. In the summer of 2020, the museum instituted mask and distancing requirements, an online-but reservation system and a i-way path through the building. Visitors could no longer meander from piece to piece, and, over the summer, xxx% of the Louvre remained airtight. According to NPR, the Louvre predictable 7,000 people on its first day back, and avid fans didn't allow information technology down: The museum sold all vii,400 available tickets for the 1000 reopening.

While that number is nowhere almost 50,000, it still felt similar a large gathering of people, no affair the restrictions the museum had put in place. It was certainly large past COVID-19 standards, to say the to the lowest degree, which is probably why the Louvre shuttered over again in tardily Oct in compliance with the French government'due south guidelines — and amongst a fasten in positive COVID-19 cases. Although the museum has since reopened, mask mandates and social distancing rules have remained, and only the outdoor eateries have been opened.

What Have We Learned From the Art of Pandemics Past?

In the mid-14th century, the Black Death, an epidemic of the bubonic plague that swept through Eurasia and North Africa, killed between 75 1000000 and 200 meg people. In response, Boccaccio penned The Decameron, a "human comedy" about people who flee Florence during the Black Death and keep their spirits up past telling comedic, tragic and raunchy stories. Information technology might accept seemed strange in your college lit course, but, now, in the face of COVID-19 memes and TikTok videos, perhaps The Decameron's comedy-in-the-face-of-despair perfectly captured the zeitgeist?

Graffiti of Superman wearing a protective face mask is displayed on the boarded-up windows of the Whitney Museum of American Art on June 19, 2020, in New York City. Credit: Gotham/Getty Images

Afterwards, in the wake of the 1918 influenza pandemic, creative person Edvard Munch painted Self Portrait After the Spanish Flu. Not unlike the selfies taken by tired, despairing healthcare professionals and overwhelmed COVID-19 survivors, Munch's cocky-portrait captured not only his jaundice but a sense of despair and nihilism. At a time when folks were dealing with the era's dual traumas — the end of World War I and 50 one thousand thousand deaths worldwide due to the 1918 influenza pandemic — it's no wonder the art world shifted so drastically.

With this in heed, it'due south clear that past public health crises have shifted the aesthetics and intent of the work artists are moved to create. Not different in the early on 20th century, we're living through a time of staggering modify. Not only have we had to contend with a wellness crisis, but in the The states, folks realized the power of protest in meaningful new ways past rallying behind the Black Lives Matter Movement; the fight for the rights and sovereignty of Indigenous peoples; trans and queer rights movements; and the fight against climate modify.

Why Was It Important to Foster Art Spaces Outside of Museums and Galleries During the Pandemic?

The AIDS Crisis of the 1980s and 1990s — augmented by the silence and inaction from President Reagan and the Centers for Illness Command and Prevention — devastated a generation, namely a generation of gay men, Black people, queer people of color and sex workers. In improver to fighting for their public health concerns to be recognized in the midst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, activists were also fighting for human rights. Equally such, myriad artists, including Keith Haring, Robert Mapplethorpe, Andres Serrano, David Wojnarowicz and Nan Goldin (just to name a few), lent their piece of work and voices to bring visibility to what the government was ignoring.

A Black Lives Matter protest art installation organized by a group of anonymous artists is displayed in the Fulton Street expanse of Bedford Stuyvesant department of Brooklyn, a borough of New York City. Credit: John Lamparski/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Imag

The intent behind these works varied: Some pieces were meant to document the epidemic, while others were meant to amplify silenced voices and underscore the humanity of folks fighting for their lives. The goal wasn't to make museum-approved works. Now, during a time of immense change and disruption, we can still see important, era-defining works of art emerging all around united states of america.

In the wake of George Floyd's murder and the kickoff wave of Black Lives Matter Protests in 2020, artists across the state — and even the world — took to the streets to create murals dedicated to Floyd, to Blackness activists and to promoting radical modify. In parks and public spaces all beyond the world, activists toppled statues and other monuments to racist and bigoted historical figures, making mode for artists to immortalize new (and actual) heroes.

In addition to street art, artists and art collectives seized the opportunity to capture the full general public's attention with other forms of protestation art. In Brooklyn, New York's Bed-Stuy neighborhood, an anonymous grouping of artists installed a Black Lives Matter piece (higher up). In it, Black figures, covered in the names and images of Black men and women who have been murdered at the easily of police force and because of white supremacy, fill a Fulton Street plaza.

Beyond the country, in Los Angeles, Mae and Sydni Wynter designed the temporary installation, Deport the Truth, at City Hall. The grassroots exhibition, made up of teddy bears property Black Lives Matter signs and sporting confront masks equally acknowledgements of the COVID-nineteen pandemic, was meant to be a "positive gateway for children to use their voices for modify."

What's the Country of Art and Museums Now?

From murals on the sides of buildings to installations in public spaces, these works of fine art are accessible to all — there'south no budgetary bulwark to entry, and they're in open spaces, which allowed folks navigating the pandemic to however run into them and all the same allows us to enjoy them as fully vaccinated people have resumed pre-pandemic activities. This isn't a new way of displaying or experiencing art past any ways, but it certainly feels more important than ever. Museums have largely begun reopening their doors while maintaining safety measures, but, as with many other COVID-19 protocols, things seem to vary state-by-state. This may remain true for the foreseeable time to come, and policies may vary from museum to museum.

Visitors and employees at MoMA in New York City on October 27, 2020. Credit: Eduardo MunozAlvarez/VIEWpress/Getty Images

While museums may not be "essential" businesses or services, information technology's clear that there's a want for art, whether it'due south viewed in-person or most. In the same way information technology'south hard to conceptualize what sorts of mediums or imagery volition dominate post-COVID-xix art, it's difficult to say what will happen to museums in the coming months. I thing is articulate, however: The art made at present will be as revolutionary as this time in history.

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