Around a year after the corona crisis began to close for several months, the New York Metropolitan Museum took stock. “We thought then it would be a couple of weeks and then everything would be fine. But that wasn't what happened – it was an unprecedented time in the history of America and the world,” said museum president Dan Weiss on a video Press conference on Tuesday.
Image: APA (dpa)
The corona crisis and the discussions about racism in the USA would have forced the museum to make changes. “We'll come out as a changed institution.” The famous Metropolitan Museum in New York's Central Park, which shows art from ancient to modern, closed its doors due to the corona pandemic on March 13, 2020 and did not reopen until the end of August – with restrictions and hygiene rules. Around 150 million dollars (about 125 million euros) in income were lost as a result, said Weiss.
56 exhibitions should have been postponed, according to a report by the museum, also published on Tuesday. And while around 4.5 million people visited the museum and its branches in the ten months before it was closed – around half of them from abroad – the figure was just under 600,000 in the six months after it reopened. However, they used around 76 liters of hand disinfectant per week together with the employees.
In response to demonstrations against racism last summer, the museum made numerous changes, Weiss said. All internships are now being paid for, money is being collected to make the art collection more diverse, and a special post has been created in the museum management to deal with such questions.
“We will emerge from the crisis stronger, clearer and more in step with the nature of our task,” said the Austrian museum director Max Hollein and announced numerous new exhibitions for spring and summer. “The museum is like an old, trusted friend, and we're picking up on it in a meaningful way.”
