The great challenges presented by the covid-19 pandemic forced an immediate and unprecedented response from cultural institutions in 2020. The temporary closure of physical facilities as part of lockdown measures dramatically affected artistic programmes, as well as essential economic and structural frameworks. On the one hand, the pandemic forced core institutional activities to stop and traditional forms of exhibiting to close. On the other, lockdown also offered a chance to rethink how collective networked spaces could be utilised for the exchange of culture and art, as well as an opportunity to consider the function and role they perform.
Fighting virality with virality
When museums and photography centres closed their doors during the first months of 2020, institutional attention immediately turned to online audiences. An initial panic produced a surplus of online content aiming to communicate that museums were still very much alive and could be ‘visited from home’. With the doors shut, exhibitions inaccessible and events cancelled, galleries and museums saw online activity as a means to remind audiences they still existed.…
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