Los Angeles County may have announced that museums can reopen as early as Friday, but of more than a dozen institutions responding to Times inquiries, not one said it was prepared to begin welcoming visitors so soon. Most won’t open for weeks, if not months.
Southern California museums are navigating complicated health and safety protocols while also seeing to the regular work of preparing new exhibitions, caring for art, managing employees and communicating with the public.
Many museums said they need time to carefully review and implement the county’s guidelines, which include limiting the number of people allowed on the premises, checking for COVID-19 symptoms such as coughing and fever, and instructing guests to use hand sanitizer and to wear face coverings. Markers should be placed throughout exhibition spaces to promote social distancing, and footpaths should be arranged to promote one-way pedestrian flow, reducing crossflow. The guidelines call for more regular sanitization of frequently touched surfaces and a plan for gathering guest information for contact tracing in the event of an outbreak.
One recommendation — contactless online reservations with timed entry tickets — alone will pose a major technological and logistical challenge to institutions that don’t have such a system already in place.
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