There is something calming about wandering the halls of a museum. It’s an event, a ritual, a source of cultural and intellectual stimulation. You know, the good kind of stimulation. The one that’s not spending 20 hours on Netflix, or decorating your island on Animal Crossing. It’s a multi-sensory experience: a melange of visuals, sounds and smells. In light of the recent health crisis, all of these in-person experiences have been cancelled, and moved online to ensure that art remains available to everyone. Obligated to ensure that “six feet apart” are kept between customers and staff, and hearts heavy with anxiety, administrations have been forced to adapt the ritual of a museum visit to ensure its survival. The question is, for how long? Long enough to render this online experience the new normal, and museum-going a hobby of the past? 

With the second week of March 2020 came numerous announcements of bans on large social gatherings across the world. When the call to adaptation was made, institutions were forced into a quick response. As universities and schools were closing down to eliminate the close social contact involved in their operation, museums and art institutes did the same. Obviously, evacuating a museum and closing its gates is a far less complicated process than kicking out thousands of students, staff and faculty. However, making the transition to online teaching is far less complicated than re-creating a museum experience on a two-dimensional screen. Texts can be reproduced mechanically with no loss of information, but artworks can’t. Of course, they can be captured in great detail and virtually reproduced; much discourse on museum digitization has captured social groups in the art world already, holding a long “pro’s”  list for its case. Thanks to technology,  all art works regardless of their medium can adorn the websites of their respective institutions. Still, something is off. 

 The Met, the Louvre and all the Guggenheims closed their doors effective immediately. The financial losses from this pandemic will be felt far into the future. With no visitors and thus, no income, huge deficits are already looming over cultural institutions. Once the doors open again, whenever that is, visitors will be far fewer — and certainly not foreign— for a while. Some institutions are luckier than others, enjoying large endowments and deep-pocketed trustees that could, if necessary, alleviate some financial stress. To remain relevant and not drop off visitors maps, museums have had to come up with ways to stay engaged with their communities. They moved online, but recreating an artwork or artefact digitally is not a new practice. The British museum has always had pictures of the looted Elgin Marbles and the Met has always pictures of the (also quite possibly looted) Blue Qur’an.

And although this enhanced approach to engaging with a museum seems to be solving many of our newfound problems, the issue of accessibility still remains. Besides basic ableism accessibility issues often overlooked, elitism also poses a threat to accessibility in museums. And that was definitely carried along in the digital version of museums. The social groups that have been historically excluded from the museum’s context now have a chance to engage with them with no one bothering them. That is, if they have a device. And an internet connection with that device. Oh, and time to do so while managing their lives, and quite possibly that of a few others, while in quarantine. Unfortunately, as accessible things are on the internet, all claims of accessibility are still being made on numerous assumptions about the audiences. 

Visuals in museum and other cultural institution sites are more than a concentrated cluster of images. They are images with a title, a text and a backstory. They’re carefully placed, following a particular order that is  aesthetically pleasing and follows some sort of progression. This progression, however, does not allow for traipsing back and forth from one wall to the other, letting your gaze wander in no particular direction. A piece beckoning to you like the mesmerizing light of an anglerfish, cannot be translated into a series of zeros and ones. The feeling of being, in the context of a cultural institution cannot be digitized, converted into a pdf or a podcast. When you’re in a museum, you’re not just looking at art. You are engaging in a collective ritual. 

 Truth be told, much more is available online now, meaning that it is also much more available. Going to the National Gallery in Edinburgh can be done from one’s couch, and viewing David in Firenze from the kitchen counter. The talks and workshops that many worked hard to plan and prepare are still happening, honoring the hard work that has gone into them. Audiences can still access and engage with cultural institutions, deriving a sense of normalcy and reassurance in these times of extreme uncertainty. The museum ritual endures, signaling that art will continue being produced and neurological connections will continue being made. The preferred context of occurrence might not be back for a while, but it will remain the optimal context.

While it is a great opportunity and a massive privilege to be able to view extraordinary pieces of work from institutions all around the globe at a time of extreme boredom and lack of stimulation, it’s just not the same as experiencing it in person. It’s not only art aficionados and Art History majors that know and firmly believe that. Going to the museum has been the perfect date, family outing or solo excursion. Viewing artworks online or taking virtual museum tours will have to do for now, but they’re nowhere near the real deal.