"For an hour, a day, a week or a month, let us half open our doors, even if we had to close them in the event of new confinement!"
This is the plea made this week by a hundred directors and presidents of art centers, led by Emma Lavigne, from the Palais de Tokyo, in Paris.
With the president of the ArtNova Endowment Fund, Frédéric Jousset, and journalist Florence Belkacem, she sent ten proposals to the Minister of Culture on Friday, February 5, which give easily achievable leads.
Like all cultural places, museums have been closed since the end of October.
And hopes of a reopening in mid-December, then at the end of January have not been confirmed.
Expensive exhibits go without visitors and sometimes have to be repacked without being seen.
For a "cultural and learning winter"
The requests from the museums want to be aware of the risks of the spread of Covid-19: the petitioners say they are ready to observe a reinforced health protocol and an even smaller gauge.
They are willing to open only part of their rooms, at certain narrow time slots.
The French and especially young people, argue the petitioners, have an urgent need, for their mental health, to go rediscover the beautiful works to resist the depression, and thus make this difficult period a "cultural and learning winter".
They are based on experiences of reopening, particularly in Italy and Spain.
In the newspaper Le Monde, a first petition, signed by personalities such as Carla Bruni, Stéphane Bern and Luc Ferry, had driven the point home: "Museums are undoubtedly the places where human interactions and the risks of contamination are the least proven ".
"Why, asks AFP Frédéric Jousset, are the libraries where we are in contact with books, galleries where spaces are cramped open, and not them?".
"Our museums are open de facto"
Frédéric Jousset, who is also an administrator at the Louvre, denounces "a blind spot".
Because, he observes, "our sector does not have a sufficiently large economic weight".
"Museums are silent and the hundreds of petitioners have come out of the woods to express what the silent majority thinks."
Because the museum, he underlines, is "the least at risk" of the cultural actors, to reopen, because the visitors move there and the agents monitor the rooms.
“Our museums are actually open, they are heated, the light is burning inside, the guards are already there!” He insists.
Industry players agree that museums are ready to welcome the public overnight, that they just need to call back some of their staff.
There are no rehearsals to organize like in theaters.
Health protocols similar to those of libraries
Among the courses of action suggested to the Minister of Culture by Frédéric Jousset, Emma Lavigne and Florence Belkacem, there are often alternative options: reopening initially during the weekend when families have time, or quite the reverse, as in Italy, on weekdays.
In all cases, health protocols should be similar to those validated in libraries, places of worship and art galleries.
The reception of schoolchildren should be encouraged and access to heritage places in areas with low circulation of the virus possible.
Priority could be given to small and medium-sized museums.
Frédéric Jousset hopes to move the lines.
Even if the "risk of arousing jealousy" of other cultural institutions (theaters, cinemas) is very real.
A data certainly taken into account by the government.
With AFP
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