Fort Worth museums prepare for ‘a different visitor experience’

After closing in March because of COVID-19, Fort Worth museums had no idea what to expect.

For more than two months, local museums dealt with shutdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Late last week, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Kimbell Art Museum and Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth announced plans to reopen to the public at 50% capacity on June 19, June 20, and July 1, respectively.

All museums will require guests and staff to wear face masks and social distancing will be enforced.

“We knew it would be a different visitor experience after this pandemic disruption,” said Andrew Walker, Amon Carter executive director. “But we need to continue to be the vital part of the community that we are.”

It will also be a very different experience for employees, now that hygiene is the responsibility of all museum staff. “Every morning I go around my office cleaning every door handle and I take my trash out at the end of the day,” said Kimbell executive director Eric Lee.

Back in March, Lee was heartbroken when his museum closed just two weeks after the opening of “Flesh and Blood,” an exhibit of Italian Renaissance and Baroque paintings. Originally scheduled to close on June 14, the show has been extended through July, largely due to restrictions on flights to Italy.

“If we had not been able to extend this exhibition that would have been a major concern for us,” Lee said. “So much went into it.” And luckily, the Kimbell does not have another exhibition scheduled until the fall.

All onsite programming —like lectures, screenings, and concerts— is still postponed at the museums. And unfortunately for the many who made excited comments on Facebook, the Kimbell’s buffet will not reopen this weekend.

The Fort Worth Museum of Science and History and the Sid Richardson Museum, which is currently remodeling its shop to be an introductory space, have the same idea. Watching the other museums reopen following guidelines from the state and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), both will soon announce plans to reopen.

“We are reconfiguring things to be touchless,” said Doug Roberts, chief public engagement officer at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, the most hands-on museum in the Cultural District. “We are changing our exhibits out to be more artifact based. The art museums didn’t have to make that change because they are already showing art artifacts.”

Studios that had hands-on activities for groups of children interacting while parents watched from a distance will be much more restrained. These art activities will be limited to one family at a time, tables will have to be sanitized after every use, and each group will use new Crayons.

Touchscreens providing information about collections will be replaced with phone apps for now, but Roberts says proximity sensors are in the works. Science experiments that used to be on tables will likely become science theater that will be presented on screens.

“That mode of kids interacting with other kids, we won’t see that again until we have a vaccine,” Roberts said. “So we are working on activities for kids to do with their families.”

With a phased approach planned, the Museum of Science and History will initially reopen without the Children’s Museum, the Noble Planetarium, or the Omni Theater.

Roberts said the feedback from surveys is split right down the middle, with one half eager to come back and others preferring to remain in quarantine. But until Fort Worth museums actually reopen their doors, low attendance and a socially distanced line outside the door are equally plausible scenarios.

Walker said he is planning for either possibility: “People are ready to come back and they anticipate museums as a destination, but they are not planning to come back (yet). Who knows how that will play out.”

As far as what has been gained during the shutdown, Fort Worth’s museums have learned to work from home. With quarantine content, they have also learned to more effectively weave online experience with onsite experience for their visitors, which has dramatically increased social media followers, YouTube subscribers, and website traffic.

“One nice thing to come out of this is how much closer all of our colleagues at other museums seem to be,” said Lee. “Everyone is communicating much more than they used to through Zoom meetings. That’s a silver lining.

“But we’ll never be exactly the same,” Lee adds. “I look at photographs of museums from the ’70s and you sometimes see guards smoking cigarettes in galleries. You can’t imagine such a world. I think we’ll experience some of that looking back at how we were before March. I don’t think we’ll ever go back to a time when we are all using the same pen to sign in to work in the morning or touching the same water dispenser. I think little things like that will be changed forever.”