If you missed Gail’s IMD webinar, “Museums for Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion,” we are pleased to let you know that our partners at the Nehru Science Centre have made it freely available on YouTube.

The Group of Ontario Emerging Museum Professionals (GOEMP) Committee presented the third edition of “Confessions of a Museum Professional.” This project invited colleagues to share anonymously written postcards about studying and working in the cultural sector. Submissions posed questions, shared frustrations, and told stories about the workplace, educational training, experiences, and failures within the arts, culture, and heritage community.

The webinar recording features Maria Piacente, Vice President of Exhibitions and Events with Lord Cultural Resources.

As the city of Mumbai bears the brunt of the Coronavirus Pandemic in India, unprecedented times have called for unprecedented measures by the local governments. The city gears up to cope with increased cases and shortfalls in medical and hospital infrastructure. To help the efforts, multiple non-healthcare facilities are being pressed into service, including cultural infrastructure like the Nehru Science Centre, and the Nehru Planetarium. The temporary exhibition spaces of the Nehru Science centre – which hosted iconic exhibitions like the Heritage on Wheels exhibition & the Vigyan Samagam – CERN & the Dancing Nataraja – is now being used as an isolation and quarantine facility for COVID-19 patients.

Gail Lord and Nehru Science Center present webinar on “Museums for Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion” on International Museum Day 2020.

As with other public spaces, the Toronto Zoo has been closed to the public for months, but is still taking great care of the animals and meeting its conservation goals. To provide access in this period of Covid-19, the Zoo introduced the “Scenic Safari.” It allows families to take a 45-minute tour around the zoo in their own vehicles through the African Rainforest Pavillion, the Americas Pavillion, and Eurasia Wilds. Some of the highlights include driving through the lion’s tunnel and over a bridge above the Rouge Valley.

In 2015, Lord Cultural Resources worked with the Zoo to analyze if and how they should maintain their elephants. We also helped them develop a 5-year strategic plan focused on their important conservation mission. Lord was also part of the team that developed a subsequent master plan for the Zoo.

Memorial Day typically draws huge crowds to the World War II Museum, with its event spaces being used throughout the day. The museum was able to open on Memorial Day for the first time since March 14, as New Orleans is now allowing museums to open at a limited capacity as part of its Phase 1 reopening.

In this Globe and Mail opinion piece, Gail Lord and her coauthors from the University of Toronto’s School of Cities argue that as the federal government considers a major stimulus package, it should expand the notion of infrastructure to recognize that our society is built not only on roads, bridges, and cables, but also on music, stories, and images.

Smithsonian museums are closed during the coronavirus pandemic, but curators across the institution are hard at work collecting artifacts to best preserve this moment in time. And they need your help. The National Museum of American History established a task force to spearhead the effort to assess and document scientific and medical events during this period and their effects on business, work, politics and culture.

Lord Cultural Resources is working with the Smithsonian Institution on revisioning and reprogramming for the Historic Core buildings on the South Mall. While this work began before the shutdown, our work is helping the Smithsonian to become more adaptable and resilient.

Museums in Canada and in countries around the world have started to reopen with safety protocols in place: limited capacity, tape on the ground indicating two metres of distance, one-way directional signage and hand sanitizer stations. Ontario has not indicated when museums can reopen, but it’s safe to expect a more regimented experience here.

Toronto-based museum planner and consultant Gail Lord says there’s another area museums should look to. “If you’re a museum, you have to really evaluate your outdoor space and make that your main experience,” she says. “It’s a huge opportunity.” She says upcoming programming must show empathy and use the opportunity reflect on the variety of ways people have experienced this pandemic.

Check out this mock-up video of what the exterior of the Niagara Historical Society Museum complex will look like when it is completed.

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — The Enoch Pratt Free Library is helping those without an internet connection stay connected amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Free WiFi access is now available outside of four library branches, including locations at Orleans Street, Forest Park, Patterson Park and Herring Run. Users do not need a library card.

The changes cultural institutions make during and after the shutdown will shape their organizations for many years to come. Every organization feels pressure to move quickly, and also to be strategic. While these times can be challenging, the current disruption can also be a chance to resolve longstanding structural issues.

Lord Cultural Resources is launching a new suite of services to help cultural institutions recover during and after the pandemic shutdown. The services address immediate concerns about engaging with audiences, supporters, and communities, as well as longer-term strategies for reopening, adapting, and thriving in the months and years to come.

Miriam Langer and Lauren Addario are coordinating cultural technology services to assist New Mexico museums and historic sites affected by the pandemic to address their technological needs. Miriam Langer is an artist, maker, and the Chair of the Media Arts and Technology department at New Mexico Highlands University. Lauren Addario teaches emerging-technologies design for New Mexico Highlands' Media Arts department.

Lord Cultural Resources worked with The New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs to conduct a forward-thinking planning process focused on developing high-level digital visitor experience strategy for 8 affiliated museums. Further phases of the study are currently in progress.

Stephanie Johnson-Cunningham built this directory of US museums created by people of color. Learn about them, the communities they represent, their advocacy, and efforts to broaden public knowledge of history/culture. They’re widely-differing yet collectively-united in their visions.

HOUSTON — They waited patiently in line in 80-degree heat, standing on large blue stickers placed six feet apart, to enter the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — the first major American art museum to reopen since the country went into lockdown in March.

To launch their summer programming series, the Carter County Museum blasts off with two virtual star parties. These virtual events will take place on Friday, May 22 and Saturday, May 23, both at 8 p.m. The star parties will be posted on the Carter County Museum Facebook page as live events.

You won’t be able to use the drinking fountains, check your coat or eat in the cafe. You will have to wear a mask, submit to a temperature check and agree to leave if you show signs of illness. These are the requirements set by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, when it reopens on Saturday, the first major arts institution in the country to welcome the public back since the outbreak of the pandemic.

As art dealers across the US wonder when they will be able to reopen for business, two galleries in the San Francisco Bay Area have taken matters into their own hands and thrown open their doors in brazen defiance of stay-at-home orders.

“We are well beyond the conditions under which there remains any practical, legal, or moral justification for keeping our business closed indefinitely,” Linda Cordair, the co-owner of Quent Cordair Fine Art in Napa, which reopened Monday, told Artnet News.

One of the first German art museums to reopen after the coronavirus lockdown is giving visitors a chance to practice social distancing in the foyer.

At the Brandenburg State Museum for Modern Art in Cottbus, around 100 km southeast of Berlin, visitors in pairs can each take one end of a selection of poles and ribbons exactly 1.5m long, the minimum distance the German government proscribes for contact between people from different households. The distance is also marked out on the foyer floor.

Germany and Italy are among several European nations moving forward with plans to reopen their museums and other public spaces, as coronavirus cases and deaths tolls begin to drop.

Concern remains about the premature reopening of public spaces and the possibility that this will help induce a second wave of the virus. However, Bart De Baere, director of Museum van Hedendaagse in Antwerp, Belgium, says that society needs to find its feet again and create a positive balance.

Only a few weeks before San Francisco Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency over coronavirus, Jessica Jaramillo was promoted within the city’s public library system. She planned to apply her skills in research, reference work and bilingual engagement to the position of acting district manager for the South West branch of the San Francisco Public Library.

LOS ANGELES — Six-year-old Franklin Wong captured the simple frustration of being a student in this city’s Unified School District in mid-March, after his classes were canceled. He wrote in big blocky letters: “I did not go anywhere,” and added an unhappy face in green and red crayon for his remote-learning assignment. This may be the first time a first grader's homework is headed to a permanent museum collection instead of a parent’s refrigerator door, a novelty that underscores how far into uncharted waters curators are sailing.

The Autry Museum of the American West, which recently acquired Franklin’s diary, is among the growing contingent of museums, academic institutions and historical societies from here to Bozeman, Mont., and Washington, D.C., that have begun recording this moment of collective uncertainty in the country’s war against the coronavirus.

At the beginning of summer each year, thousands of tourists flock to Stonehenge to celebrate the summer solstice, a.k.a. the first day of summer. They gather by the ancient monument to witness a remarkable event on the longest day of the year: the solstice sunrise. The summer solstice sunrise comes up above the stones in nearly perfect alignment. June 21, the date of the solstice, isn’t far away. Stonehenge will still be closed to crowds due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, the English Heritage organization is hoping to keep tourists away by turning to technology to share the event for the first time in the monument’s history. They’re going to livestream the summer solstice at Stonehenge (via Mental Floss).

Banksy, Kobra and others create wall art in the time of COVID-19.

(LONDON) — A new work by the elusive street artist Banksy, honoring health workers, has been unveiled at a British hospital. The framed picture, titled “Game Changer,” depicts a young boy sitting on the floor playing with a nurse superhero toy. Batman and Spiderman action figure toys lie in a wastepaper basket next to the boy.

A number of Toronto Public Library branches are turning into food banks as the need skyrockets during the COVID-19 pandemic. "A lot of the staff volunteered to work in the branches they normally work [at], so they know the community," said Gail MacFayden, an area manager with Toronto Public Library.