I happened on the attached podcast in which theee museum directors – of the National Gallery, the Met and Yale Center for British Art – discuss the consequences of COVID on their institutions: their closure to the public, 300 days for the National Gallery which had to close three times over; the migration online and development of new digital programmes; what to do about suspect sources of funding, in which Gabriele Finaldi and Dan Weiss imply, but do not state, that their institutions depend on philanthropy, so are under some degree of obligation to honour the terms of historic gifts; and new ways of interpreting their collections, in which Courtney Martin in Yale has been the most radical.
My own recent experience of the National Gallery has been the benefit of fewer surrounding crowds which makes possible more close and concentrated looking, which runs counter to the drive to increase visitor numbers (and revenue).
All three directors talk interestingly about the challenges of COVID, but surprisingly little about the loss of revenue and staff.
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
I shall have to listen to this. I thought the recent three part series on BBC4 ‘Inside America’s Treasure House: The Met’ was fascinating on the fall out from Covid and on the efforts made to keep supporters on board, for example in the area of textile conservation.
Yes, so did I – really impressive. Charles