Just a few months ago, most people could have simply taken a taxi to the city and have spent the entire day touring museums while having fun. After the emergence of Coronavirus, museums, along with most other businesses, have had to close their doors to the public.
Before the pandemic, my family would regularly visit art and history museums. Art museums were my favorite, but as you can guess, the Covid-19 outbreak has prevented my family from visiting any museums as of late. I wondered how these favorite places of mine would have changed because of the pandemic, since people will forget about museums entirely if no action is taken.
As I was searching for a painting to use in my art project, I clicked on a museum website link. It took me to a full online database of artifacts and paintings that belonged to the museum. Until then, I had never known that museums had digitized their content. Some museum websites also had documentaries, videotaped tours of the actual museum, and even activities for children. I thought that this was great for people looking to experience museums during this pandemic.
According to The New York Times, the web traffic for multiple museum websites have gone up by several multiples across the globe, which means that more people have been frequenting museum websites since the pandemic started. For example, the number of online visitors the Louvre (the world’s largest art museum) received has gone up tenfold since the start of the pandemic. The features of museum websites almost seem like a trailer for the physical museum because they give visitors a taste of what being in a museum is like without having it being identical to visiting. I thought that it was strange that the web traffic of museums has been increasing, because many might find watching TV or playing video games to be more enjoyable than going on virtual museum tours. As it turns out, many people have been reaching out to the resources of museums to entertain both themselves and their children, and many museums boast impressive amounts of content directed towards children, both in-person and online. You can read and listen to virtual tours of specific areas of the museum, read blog posts, and even learn how to make certain kinds of art at home. Some of the content under the children’s category included a search database with paintings for children, tutorials on how to create simple art projects, and videos made by the museum about their art.
