As businesses and institutions thrust toward a return to "normal" in areas where the pandemic is fading (or, rather concerningly, not), museums have functioned as a litmus test of local confidence in resuming daily life. South Korea, for example, enthusiastically restored national museums in May only to close them again weeks later as it detected a new ripple of cases. Designed for lingering and eminently nonessential, art museums reflect many of the challenges associated with spaces of leisure. Maintaining social distancing is certainly simpler in the cases of open-air galleries or sculpture gardens: LACMA, Art Omi, Glenstone, and the Whitney all displayed publicly viewable works through the pandemic, and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art projected videos onto the city's blank-slate Bauhaus facades. But now, as some big-banner arts spaces reopen, they are deploying strategies and technologies to help keep visitors distant and healthy.
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