Creativity is in the air as the University of New Mexico Art Museum looks forward to reopening on Aug. 31 after an 18-month closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The museum staff are currently working on preparations to ensure that they are ready to welcome back visitors shortly after school starts.
The museum will follow the University’s COVID-19 guidelines, which currently require that masks are worn indoors regardless of vaccination status. In addition, all personnel accessing the facility must be fully vaccinated by Sept. 30. During the closure, the museum developed various scenarios for how the museum could cope during the pandemic and has different protocols ready in the event of a campus-wide change in mandates.
A current project that the UNMAM is focusing on is their upcoming exhibition called “Visionary Modern: Raymond Jonson Trilogies, Cycles, and Portrait.” This exhibit will start the same day as the museum’s reopening and run until Nov. 24, featuring Raymond Jonson, a former UNM professor and artist. This will be the only exhibition for the fall, partly due to maintenance upgrades that are happening throughout the College of Fine Arts through November.
“This is maybe a soft opening for us in the fall, and fingers crossed we’re planning on really being back ‘full strength’ in the spring with exhibitions, programs, et cetera,” UNMAM director Arif Khan said.
UNMAM is classified as a teaching museum and has a study room available for students to further their education, which marketing manager Devin Geraci said is an opportunity for “an intimate viewing with the artwork.” Khan said teachers can use “actual artwork instead of virtual slides” in this room, which is a big difference from the Zoom classes students have been attending for the past year and a half.
“I think it’s crucial for artists to see the real thing. It’s great to have art books and to see things online but a lot of work has a physicality and a presence that is undeniable, particularly sculptural works and paintings,” Constance DeJong, a sculpture professor with the UNM art department, wrote to the Daily Lobo. “In reproduction you can see the object and understand it in limited ways, but being present with the work you experience the totality of the work. There’s just no comparison.”
During their physical closure, the museum was using virtual exhibition software to upload museum exhibits online, and they plan to continue some of that virtual work as they reopen. UNMAM will be testing out a custom platform with New Mexico artist Rose B. Simpson in the fall, where she can correspond virtually with students about art-related work.
“The design of the site is meant to be different from what students have been used to with their online teaching platforms, meant to be a little more visually engaging, a little more poetic and not feel so much like ‘homework,’” Khan said. “(The goal is) that it’s really like a conversation with her and not an assignment.”
Once the project is over after the fall semester, UNMAM plans to share some of the artwork and conversations with the public. Because this is a first-time project for the museum, Khan said they are just testing it out for now. If it turns out to be successful, they plan to use it in the future to connect students and artists from all over the world.
“For artists in the community to see these exhibitions creates a sense (that) they are not alone in their studios but that there’s a whole world of creative people that they are a part of,” DeJong wrote.
Students are not only accepted as visitors but are also important in the museum’s workforce, Khan said. According to Geraci, the museum staff have been working to integrate student positions into a wider range of jobs at the museum, moving beyond strictly front desk work and transitioning to work with social media, communications and more. This way, in the case of another physical closure, student workers don’t need to worry about losing their positions since the work is based on more than just in-person museum visitors.
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“We’re really just trying to get students involved in just about every aspect of the museum that we can,” Geraci said.
Khan encouraged students from all over campus, not just the art department, to visit the museum, whether it be for a learning experience or just as a social or quiet space. Khan also said staff and faculty are more than welcome at the museum, as he wants this to be a place the entire campus can enjoy.
Megan Gleason is the Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Lobo. She can be contacted at editorinchief@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @fabflutist2716
