Museums and COVID-19: Community resilience post-crisis

Cultural heritage sites and facilities, including museums, are among the most affected sectors by the current coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Each year, the International Council of Museum (ICOM) selects a theme to celebrate International Museums Day on May 18 and for the exceptionally chaotic 2020, the chosen theme is Museums for Equality: Diversity and Inclusion.

Museums are institutions that aim to conserve, research, interpret and present the tangible and intangible heritage of a society. It promotes intellectual exchange among diverse users and supports discovery, creativity and community resilience. This year, due to the measures taken to control the spread of COVID-19, flexibility and promptness were required.

How are cultural institutions, including museums, coping with the accelerating events of 2020?

To cope with the situation, several museums around the world are offering online virtual tours, some digital libraries and archives are now public and UNESCO launched online platforms to demonstrate living heritage and COVID-19 international initiatives. Many webinars, lectures, training courses and cultural events are also online and more accessible by the community than ever before!

Looking at all initiatives from around the world, one can conclude that digital means are not a privilege anymore, but rather a necessity to stay connected. Digital means are offering innovative ways to integrate museums and cultural institutions into the modern communication network and support community resilience.

Museums aim to be barrier-free as well, whereas all the information is accessible to everyone, for people with and without disabilities. The rapid need to benefit from the possibilities offered by digital technology will eventually lead to that goal. The transformation process needs to be supported by digital infrastructure, as well as trained human resources to develop and sustain initiatives locally with minimal distant technical support, starting from the object interpretation, to the finest detail of the museum environment.

Museum and heritage professionals should benefit from this time to develop guidelines and measures for the reopening phase, focusing on, but not only, the visitors and staff health safety, museum object security, museum environment, universal design measures, means of digital communication and cultural exchange.

The effect of COVID-19 pandemic on cultural heritage facilities are worrying, but perceiving the museum as a forum, a place for confrontation and experimentation, with will and commitment from heritage and museum professionals are key to recover and be at the heart of the response to COVID-19.

The writer is an architect and heritage manager. She contributed this article to The Jordan Times