Bay Area museums join effort to deliver art online
While museums in the Bay Area have temporarily shut their doors in an effort to help reduce the spread of the new coronavirus, they are looking for new ways to give art lovers their culture fix.
On Saturday, March 14, a day after the Asian Art Museum, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art jointly announced their closures, the organizations joined the worldwide #Mu seumFromHome campaign on social media.
The idea is to deliver art to people who are practicing selfquarantine and social distancing at home during the coronavirus pandemic, an initiative that became even more crucial after issuance of a Bay Area “shelter in place” order for all residents that allows only essential businesses and activities to continue.
SFMOMA led the charge, even before that directive was issued by six Bay Area counties and Santa Cruz County on Monday, March 16, by offering links to pieces in digital collections from a variety of art and science organizations, including the Gardner Museum in Boston and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. “We’re proud to be part of a community of museums working to provide ongoing or expanded #MuseumFromHome options to our communities in response to recent closures,” SFMOMA said in a tweet.
Included in its links were pointers to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s live Jelly Cam, the Museum of the City of New York’s digital collection and an athome online library from the California Academy of Sciences, which also closed its doors as of Thursday, March 12.
The de Young Museum offered a collection of digital content from its “Soul of a Nation” exhibition, while Exploratorium educators Ron Hipschman, Lori Lambertson and Paul Dancstep, along with host Sam Sharkland,
S.F. Museum of Modern Art has links to displays from other museums.
discussed the famous mathematical constant pi via a live stream on Saturday, March 14, on the museum’s website, and on its Facebook, YouTube and Twitter feeds.
The Contemporary Jewish Museum offered its followers a peek at its current exhibition “Levi Strauss: A History of American Style,” with a link to the history of Albert Einstein’s favorite leather jacket.
Several other museums around the world that are part of Google Arts & Culture’s collection of 500 museums and galleries also used the opportunity to remind arts patrons about their rich offering of online tours and exhibits, including the British Museum in London, Musee D’Orsay in Paris, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.