‘We can remake ourselves’: South Florida’s art, science museums hope for a fall rebound

Friends Cynthia Angula and Pamela Echeverria had a feeling the South Florida Science Center looked safe when they passed the museum’s socially distanced dinosaur, Rosie the Tyrannosaurus rex, wearing a mask.

That feeling lasted all of five minutes. Once they entered the West Palm Beach museum’s River of Grass exhibit, their 2-year-old toddlers, Maya and Nicholas, rushed to the Florida fish aquarium and pressed their faces against the glass. Echeverria cringed.

“We’re adults so we know better, but they love touching everything in sight,” says Echeverria, on her first museum playdate in six months. Nicholas wandered to a video touch screen, giggled and tapped it. Seconds later a touchless hand sanitizer station poured liquid into Angula’s hands, and she disinfected her son’s fingers. “I’m just glad it’s pretty empty for a weekday. I wouldn’t dare come back on a weekend when there’s more people.”

Such is the new normal at South Florida museums. Six months after the COVID-19 pandemic shut them down, South Florida art and science centers are now trying everything to lure still-cautious patrons back into their galleries.

All museums have signaled big plans this fall, such as blockbuster exhibits and new programs. Some are reopening for the first time since March. But most have halted in-person events – receptions, art talks, classes, festivals – through the end of 2020, convinced the public appetite does not yet exist. Instead they have pivoted to virtual programs to stay engaged with members.

But there is added pressure to drive up visitors soon, after a summer without revenue from admissions, gift-shop sales and food concessions. Several museums are grappling with fewer staff – docents, ticket-takers, security guards – after laying off or furloughing up to half their workers. And others still haven’t opened, including Perez Art Museum Miami, Miami-Dade County’s biggest art center.

Bonnie White LeMay, director of the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Delray Beach, is under no delusion museums will rebound quickly.

“Traffic has been slow,” says LeMay, who re-opened the Morikami’s Japanese Gardens in June but still keeps its indoor galleries shut. “It’s going to take time for people to come back and feel safe. But when you have a crisis like the pandemic, you can look at it as an opportunity: We can remake ourselves.”

We checked in with five Broward and Palm Beach museums and asked them how their fall programming will make South Floridians feel safe.

NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale

1 E. Las Olas Blvd.; 954-525-5500; NSUArtMuseum.org

How the museum adapted: In late February, Italian friends warned executive director Bonnie Clearwater that people were getting sick at Milan fashion shows. “I thought, if it’s happening in a hub of international tourism, I counted the days mentally when it could hit us,” Clearwater recalls. By early March, Clearwater asked Nova Southeastern University to train staff to use Zoom, so that when lockdowns were announced, employees could easily work remotely. The university then froze all vacant jobs, and staff took furloughs to prevent layoffs, she says. This summer the museum beefed up its virtual programs with lectures, studio tours and added 3,000 artworks to its online catalog. Clearwater calls it a success: Online traffic jumped 77 percent this summer compared to the same period in 2019.

What’s new and safe: Six months after it closed, NSU Art Museum reopened Sept. 15 with its “Happy!” exhibition (extended until Oct. 11), along with new sanitizer stations, 25 percent capacity and disinfection protocols. Starry Nights, the museum’s evening art-music-dance gathering, will return Oct. 1 as the rebranded Sunny Days, and admission will be free. And 13 South Florida artists will install huge site-specific works for the South Florida Cultural Consortium show, opening Nov. 21. “I don’t want to paint a rosy picture. It’s been a struggle,” Clearwater says. “We’re going to have a hybrid model for the foreseeable future, half virtual and half in-person.”

Norton Museum of Art

1450 S. Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach; 561-832-5196; Norton.org

How the museum adapted: Closed since March 13, the Norton, which debuted a $100 million facelift in 2019, briefly reopened its outdoor sculpture gardens in May. When a security guard tested positive for COVID-19, the scare was enough to close the entire museum, says Bruce Gendelman, the Norton’s acting CEO. Federal Paycheck Protection Program money helped during the interim, but the museum has since furloughed or laid off 45 of its 116 employees and made the rest take 10 percent pay cuts and reduced hours. “It was a very significant burden for our staff,” Gendelman says. “We’re not getting any earned revenue right now. Tickets, the big event spaces and catering facilities – that’s zero. Gift shop sales, all zero.”

What’s new and safe: The Norton plans to reopen with a raft of new exhibits sometime in mid-November – or even later, ideally when COVID-19 positivity rates dip below 2 percent in Palm Beach County, Gendelman says. “We don’t want to yo-yo, open and then immediately have to close again,” he says. All employees will have mandatory weekly COVID-19 testing, paid for by the museum. The museum will also unveil a timed ticketing system for crowd control. But mostly the museum will ramp up its Norton From Home virtual programming: The online series “¡Vista!: A Look at People and Cultures from Central America, South America, and the Caribbean” exploring South Florida’s cultural diversity through art, opened Sept. 15. The Friday-night Art After Dark, once the Norton’s most popular in-person gathering, is now the museum’s most popular virtual event.

South Florida Science Center and Aquarium

4801 Dreher Trail N., West Palm Beach; 561-832-1988; SFScienceCenter.org

How the museum adapted: The Science Center re-opened May 22, the first Palm Beach County museum to do so, director Kate Arrizza says. “I wanted us to open quickly, because if there’s any cultural organization that opens first, it should be a science center,” she says. And patrons wanted it, she adds. During its 67-day lockdown, the Science Center got creative to stay abreast of what patrons wanted, relying on data from emailed newsletters and social-media comments on TripAdvisor, Google Reviews, Facebook “or anywhere people left reviews online,” marketing director Melinda Grenz adds. The science center eventually laid off 16 staff – nearly 30 percent of its workforce – when COVID-19 cases spiked this summer, and admissions and summer camps brought little revenue.

What’s new and safe: Composing 200 human cadavers and their perfectly preserved parts — bones, organs, muscles — “Real Bodies: The Exhibition” will open Sept. 28 as the Science Center’s first blockbuster exhibit since March. Along with COVID-19 upgrades (hand sanitizer stations, floor stickers six feet apart), science classes and talks will stay virtual through the end of 2020, and fresh programming is added Fridays at noon on the center’s Facebook and YouTube pages. “The 1/8 ”Real Bodies"] show is going to be open for six months, so we have six months to rebuild trust," Arrizza says.

Boca Raton Museum of Art

500 Plaza Real; 561-392-2500; BocaMuseum.org

How the museum adapted: The museum reopened June 3 with free admission through September – one way the venue is trying to tempt patrons back into indoor spaces. Without Mizner Park’s usual big-ticket concerts and busy restaurants, executive director Irvin Lippman says foot traffic has been slow – and he’s thankful for it. “I don’t want to bang the drum with a blockbuster show right now,” he says. “This level of attendance makes other people feel safe.” No staff lost jobs during shutdowns, Lippman adds, and canceling this summer’s art school, with 5,000 students, was probably the biggest financial sting to the museum.

What’s new and safe: The museum will debut its online gift shop Oct. 1 along with virtual fall classes. A trio of exhibits, debuting Oct. 7 with no reception, will include “All My Presidents and Other Recent Acquisitions”; the video collection “Trine Lise Nedreaas: The Entertainers”; and “Jeff Whyman: Out of Nature.” Two other shows have been extended through Jan. 3: “Edward Steichen: In Exaltation of Flowers” and “Works on Paper: Drawn from the Collection.”

Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens

4000 Morikami Park Road, Delray Beach; 561-495-0233; Morikami.org

How the museum adapted: Their first piece of bad news came this spring: Two artists from Boston and Japan, too skittish to travel with COVID-19 restrictions at the time, pulled their internationally touring exhibit from the Morikami’s lineup. The museum was suddenly without a fall exhibit, director Bonnie White LeMay says. “We never, ever had an exhibitor pull out like this, but the pandemic spoke a little louder, I guess,” she says. “So our curators and preparators got to work on a back-up.” When Morikami reopened its outdoor Japanese Gardens on June 16, they kept its indoor galleries closed. To LeMay’s surprise, visitor traffic picked up in the gardens. “As long as weather held out, families came out,” she says. “It kept us going through the lean summer months.”

What’s new and safe: The Morikami’s makeup fall exhibit, “Collecting Stories,” will open Nov. 7 with works pulled from its 8,000-piece permanent collection, and will be the Morikami’s first indoor show since March. But the fall’s other big moneymakers – October’s 7,000-visitor Lantern Festival, private wedding rentals – have been scrapped or canceled. Instead, the museum has so far sold 300 Lantern-at-Home kits online, LeMay says, letting visitors do a socially distant version of the Japanese Obon holiday. “It’s not safe or healthy to have that many people on property at this point,” LeMay says.

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