With everyone talking about a “new normal” during this crisis, I am anxious that we do not see it as a perpetual “abnormal” or that we dwell in nostalgia for the “old normal.” Neither I nor the staff members at the Georgia Museum of Art are wringing our hands and longing for a non-existent halcyon age of only three weeks ago. Rather we have taken on the challenge: to follow our mission; to engage our audiences in novel and creative ways; and to follow through with our business continuity plan.
Thus, our educators are devising new online programming that will be both entertaining and didactic, including yoga and mindfulness classes to keep us all both physically alert and stable as well as emotionally tranquil. The first of those incentives will begin this Thursday.
Our security forces continue to protect the building and its collections. Our communications department has, in addition to its public-relations and editing responsibilities, also taken on the project of helping the MFA candidates fulfill their degree requirements, since we are unable to hold their public exhibition this year, which had been scheduled for April. Instead, our communications department will work with the Lamar Dodd School of Art to develop and present an online exhibition of their work as well as to move other current and future exhibitions online as much as possible. I am looking forward to it!
In better news, I am proud to tell you that our book “Deborah Roberts: The Evolution of Mimi” is a finalist for the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards, in the art category. This recognition makes me and the staff particularly proud and excited because it rewards a collaboration with Spelman College, one of our strategic goals being to cooperate regionally and nationally with our peers.
The preparators, who are our art handlers and designers for exhibitions, are at work deinstalling one exhibition and making plans for the return of works and arrival of others for future exhibitions. Our head preparator is teaching a class in design, and will be conducting it remotely as soon as the university resumes courses, online.
The curators are sheltering in place, doubly protected behind walls of books, since I know that they are using this time for research and writing and the development of future projects: for example, we have exhibitions and programming booked through 2023.
Administratively, through our business office, we are getting everyone paid on time, picking up and sorting mail and, our donors and patrons be thanked, still processing much-needed contributions. Our development staff is planning for a rescheduled Board of Advisors meeting and turning some of their considerable efforts to the next Elegant Salute, currently set for late January.
The registrars, likewise, are busy with many tasks that always seem to build up during our exhibition seasons. They are cataloging recent acquisitions, working on getting all our works of art online and handling the myriad details that come with cancellations, rescheduling and correspondence.
We are glad to be a part of the University of Georgia, whose own continuity plans have had two overarching goals and ways to attain them: keeping the UGA “family” safe and healthy and assuring our ability to continue teaching and protecting students, staff and faculty. Part of that planning has included our interaction with the community of which the university is a proud part. Since the museum is on the front line of community service, we are particularly grateful to the university for its forthright diligence and genuine concern for the physical and mental health of all Georgians.
In short, we here at the museum are all at work, all with gainful and important tasks, and all clear in our duties to protect and steward the collections and to continue to engage our audiences in lifetime visual-arts learning. Our vision of how to accomplish our goals may have to change, but our mission remains the same. President Trump and others have described this period in our national history as wartime, albeit to us of the 21st century a war of novel and as-yet undetermined proportions. I am glad that my staff have assumed the role of warriors.
Authored by:
William U. Eiland
