Museums in Pandemic Survival Mode

For art museums, the pandemic has cut a grim swath of damage: diminished resources, vanished programs and costly exhibits gone dark or cancelled, while absent audiences tap on computers to access virtual experiences.

How are museums handling these challenges as they prepare to reopen? Smart strategies include downsizing and developing or increasing digital programming. But will visitors return? And when they do, what will they see?

In September, the Bass, Frost and ICA museums reopened with many safety precautions in place, including required masks, social distancing and timed-ticket entry to lower significantly the number of visitors inside. For them and other public cultural institutions, sustaining six months and more of lost revenue and audiences, said Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs director Michael Spring, is “unthinkable, but that’s what’s happening right now.”

The county commission approved $10 million in CARES Act money to help, which Spring’s department is now distributing to museums and other county organizations. The funds will address “everything from business interruption costs to reopening expenses,” he said. He’s encouraged that Mayor Giménez has recommended renewing grants for the year beginning Oct. 1 at full funding.

“We’re hoping this signals to other arts funders that they’ve got to maintain strong funding of arts organizations,” Spring said, pledging to be “incredibly flexible” about how museums and others want to use county money. While considering digital programming wise for retaining and expanding audiences, he said it will never substitute for the experience of seeing art in person. But before many art lovers are ready to return to museums, there will need to be “confidence building.”

“People are still worried about engaging with life right now,” he added, pointing to severely reduced attendance at the reopened Frost Museum of Science and Vizcaya Museum and Gardens.

With support from federal Paycheck Protection Program funding, Miami-Dade County, City of Miami Beach, local and national foundations, universities affiliated with museums, and generous board members and patrons, economic losses are stiff but not as much as they might be. With the exception of PAMM, art museums have retained most if not all of their staff. Biscayne Times spoke with eight area art museum directors to get a temperature reading on their current operations. They reported elaborate efforts to follow or exceed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention requirements to make spaces safe and enjoyable for visitors, and they encouraged patrons to renew memberships.

The Bass

Director Silvia Cubiñá said about $600,000 was cut from the museum’s $4.26 million budget; she expects next year’s budget to be around $2.3 million. Board members have paid their dues and continue to help. A popular digital program addressed art and politics with Pete Buttigieg, generating 1,221 live views and 6,553 total views. Although staff had expected 140 children to enroll in its 10 week-long virtual summer art camp, there were 700, some from out of state.

For people unwilling to enter buildings, the museum is presenting “Art Outside,” a network of public art expanding beyond the museum’s Collins Park campus to extend throughout South Beach. It includes new work by Miami-based Karen Rifas. Inside, the museum allows 25 people at a time. Current exhibitions include “Better Nights,” with immersive art experience by Mickalene Thomas, and “The Willfulness of Objects,” with installation by Abraham Cruzvillegas.

Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, FIU

Director Jordana Pomeray said the reduction of her operating budget “was not as dramatic” as she’d anticipated. While the Frost was closed, “we realized that a satisfying digital experience doesn’t look like a replica of a live experience. Fifty percent of what we do now will be digit

al. It’s been an awakening.”

This past summer two virtual workshops with Miami-based artist Aurora Molina drew slightly more than 100 viewers. Now that the Frost is open, at any given time there’ll be 25 visitors inside the museum. On view are “The Inside World: Contemporary Aboriginal Australian Memorial Poles from the Debra and Dennis Scholl Collection” and the timely “House to House: Women, Politics and Place.” The latter exhibition includes artist and MacArthur Fellow Deborah Willis, a leading figure in Black visual culture. She will deliver the virtual Steven & Dorothea Green Critics’ Lecture on Oct. 17 at 3 p.m., broadcast on Zoom and Facebook Live.

Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (ICA)

By delaying exhibitions and in-person programs, ICA director Alex Gartenfeld said, “we reduced our budget from $6 million a year to $5 million. That’s in terms of expenses, not revenue.” Donations haven’t declined. “Our board as well as The Miami Foundation has been incredibly generous,” he added.

The museum’s Knight Foundation Art + Research Cen

ter moved its symposiums and workshops online, quadrupling the number of applicants and reaching Europe and Asia. The program was doubled to accommodate close to 80 participants. A second program with Knight was started during quarantine, commissioning eight artists with ties to Miami to create new work for ICA’s website and social media platforms.

Only 20 visitors are allowed in the museum per hour. On view is “Allan McCollum: Works since 1969,” McCollum’s first U.S. museum retrospective; “Tomás Esson: The GOAT,” the first solo museum presentation for Cuban painter Esson; and “Ektachrome Archive,” 38 documentary photographs and 10 journals by Lyle Ashton Harris.

Lowe Art Museum, UM

The Lowe’s noncompensation budget, excluding salaries and benefits, said director Jill Deupi, was “reduced by 75%, but the university has done an extraordinary job of preserving jobs.” An unrestricted gift of $75,000 from a local family foundation was a welcome support early in the pandemic.

The Lowe is open only on a limited basis to UM faculty and students for scholarly, academic or curricular purposes. Deupi expects the museum may reopen to the public after Thanksgiving. When it does, admission will be free. Entry fees are “a barrier to serving our community with greater diversity,” she said. “We’re focused not only on staying afloat but also on social justice issues.” These issues have always been a priority, she added, but are even more so now.

Digital programming continues and will continue after reopening; an online event about its exhibition featuring prominent American Black artist Jacob Lawrence drew 100 attendees. Also popular, Deupi said, is the Lowe’s Tuesday 1 p.m. mindfulness session connecting people through art. “People are joining us from across the country,” she said. “It’s been a lifeline for people who are feeling anxious or stressed.”

Museum of Art and Design (MOAD), MDC

Director Rina Carvajal – who also oversees galleries on Freedom Tower’s first floor – said her operating budget is stable for now and that the museum is “applying for every possible grant we can.” First-floor galleries will reopen Nov. 5, and “The Body Electric,” organized by Walker Art Museum, will also open on that date on Freedom Tower’s second floor. It should be “very relevant” to months of experiencing art on digital screens, she said. It explores ideas about the real and virtual by presenting an intergenerational range of artists working in the past 50 years, focusing on gender, sexuality, class and race.

Inside the first floor Kislak Center, which is devoted to pre-Columbian culture, interactive features are being changed into state-of-the-art nontouchable elements. Also on the first floor, Cuban Legacy Gallery will present “Remaking Miami: Josefina Tarafa’s Photographs from the 1970s.” The museum’s website will offer video tours of exhibitions, access to brochures and a new publication, “MOAD Unbound,” free to download. The current digital offering is the participatory “I Remember Miami” by Dora García.

Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), North Miami

According to director Chana Budgazad Sheldon, there’s been a 20% reduction in the operating budget. “We’ve pivoted into virtual and bringing more art outdoors,” she said. When lockdown began, MOCA offered virtual art education programs for families who often attended the museum. Its virtual summer camp program expanded the museum’s reach nationally and internationally, serving about 100 children ages 6 to 13. Education programs have been extended to adults, with figure drawing and photography. Through September, the photo installation “I Am A Man,” by Carl Juste, was presented on MOCA’s plaza. A lively range of virtual lectures and conversations are accessible on the museum’s website and YouTube channel. Currently staff is preparing the next exhibition, which is devoted to Mexican-born multimedia artist and performer Raúl de Nieves. No reopening date has been announced.

Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM)

The museum had planned to reopen Sept. 1, but now isn’t ready to announce a new date, said director Franklin Sirmans. Before the closure, PAMM's approved budget for fiscal year 2020, supported in part by Miami-Dade County, was approximately $15 million, according to a museum spokesperson. Losses now total $2.865 million, Sirmans said, clarifying previously published losses of $3 to $5 million. The museum has asked for additional funds from the board on top of board members’ annual contributions. Member dues are $20,000 plus gala tickets and other contributions, so it’s hard to give an exact figure for their support, said the museum spokesperson.

There are ongoing “concentrated relief and recovery efforts,” Sirmans explained, with PAMM receiving funding from various sources including the board, patrons, supporters and foundations. Efforts are “not where we want them to be, but we have almost 100% support in the general big picture.” In May, PAMM laid off 15 full-time workers, furloughed 54 part-timers and cut salary for 49 employees; since those figures were announced it has hired its teaching artists “here and there to do things virtually,” Sirman said.

The museum provides a steady diet of virtual experiences, with its “Local Views” series highlighting Miami-based artists and Sirmans’ conversations with cultural figures. Staff has also been hired to prepare for the next exhibition, “Allied with Power: African and African Diaspora Art from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection.”

Wolfsonian, FIU

The museum’s budget is typically between $4 and $4.5 million a year, said acting director Casey Steadman; for 2021 it’s $3.8 million. Because the Wolfsonian’s exhibits are on upper floors, dealing with tight stairways and elevators poses particular challenges for adhering to safety requirements. The museum envisions “a slightly revised visitor experience,” said Steadman, with an exhibit on the ground floor, rare for this Miami Beach museum. When it does reopen, because there won’t be “a full visitor experience, we don’t anticipate charging admission.”

A future exhibition may present 1930s Works Progress Administration material, relevant to today’s economic hardships. Among the museum’s digital offerings based on its collection is DigiBooks Library, and it will be virtualizing its key K-12 programming as well. “Currently the Knight Foundation has indicated they will support it, but we have also asked for support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services CARES grant,” Steadman said. “We thought it was important to ask for two hoping that one will come through.” The pandemic, he continued, has been an “unfortunate kick-starter,” demonstrating the exponential value of digital.

“Before we might not have been engaged in virtual experiences; now it’s going to be part of overall planning,” Steadman said. “Anyone with an internet connection can understand the wealth of our collection.” No reopening date has been announced.

Reclaiming Beauty, Culture & Connection

When the pandemic came to Miami this past spring, the unthinkable happened. Not only did it rip through our cultural landscape, but so many things we took for granted were instantly saturated with anxiety and fear. Even going grocery shopping became fraught with unthinkable choices. Is it safe? Will I catch a deadly disease? Will I spread it to my family?

And vanishing right before our eyes was the chance, in museums and galleries, to savor deeply the colors of a compelling painting, explore the intricate details of an immersive art installation and marvel at the way a photographer’s eye transforms the familiar into an unfamiliar but dazzling image. We lost, for a time, the collective experience of artistic beauty in all its infinite and tantalizing permutations. Now those cultural experiences, which can nourish the mind and spirit quite like nothing else, are edging back. Their return is thanks in no small part to the valiant professionals in our art museums and the artists they present.

“I think in general art museums and others are being incredibly creative,” said Spring in speaking to Miami’s resilience. “I expect nothing less from our arts community.”