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Covid REMIX: Toronto Public Library and friends remix wartime posters for the pandemic (Toronto, Canada)
In the depths of Covid lockdown, the Toronto Public Library provoked the public with a creative challenge: to pick a WWII propaganda poster from its online collection, and adapt it for Covidtimes. This simple, cheap, low-tech initiative proved a perfect vehicle for people’s pent-up desire to create, share, and contribute, especially during those unusual times. Many submissions were created and shared, boosting awareness and appreciation of the library’s collections. By welcoming the public’s creativity, humour, and imagination, the library showed itself to be responsive, relevant, and fun. Background The Toronto Public Library is one of the world’s busiest urban public library systems, with 100 branches across the city, 10.5 million…
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Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation – Digital Games for Adults (Athens, Greece)
The Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation implemented an online activity to enhance creativity and self-confidence, transform introversion into expression, and encourage the use of digital tools from the elderly. Background The museum was designed from the onset to house the Collection of the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation. The collection focuses on modern and contemporary art by Greek and foreign artists, including rare works by masters of the European avant-garde such as Cézanne, van Gogh, Gauguin, Monet, Degas, Rodin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Bonnard, Picasso, Braque, Léger, Miró, Giacometti, Balthus, as well as works by distinguished modern Greek painters including Parthenis, Bouzianis, Vassiliou, Hadjikyriakos-Ghika, Tsarouchis, Moralis, Tetsis and others. The building is a…
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Culture to the Courtyards. Kaunas transformed into open air scenes (Kaunas, Lithuania)
The quarantine affected our daily routine, but life didn’t stop. During the first lockdown Kaunas, the European Capital of Culture 2022, introduced the project “Culture to the Courtyards”. This initiative brought culture to the citizens’ courtyards without prejudicing the quarantine restrictions of that time. Background Project “Culture to the Courtyards” was an initiative of public institution “Kaunas 2022”. The institution was established to implement the cultural program “Kaunas - European Capital of Culture 2022”. In 2015 it began the journey to becoming a European Capital of Culture with the slogan “from temporary to contemporary”. As it is stated in the official website “The organization aims at the union of cultural…
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An open-air exhibition “Homo absentia” (Vilnius, Lithuania)
Cultural institutions during the lockdown were looking for the different ways of how to reach their audience. Mostly that was the virtual activities which could not last long because people started to get tired of the “online” everything. Moreover, virtual exhibitions couldn’t in most cases replace the need to be face-to-face with an artwork. Therefore, the Lewben Art Foundation together with the partners organized an open-air exhibition “Homo Absentia” (The Person is Missing/Absent). This exhibition created a unique opportunity for the residents of Vilnius to change their routes and to visit the open-air exhibition on their daily routine. Background Exhibition was organized by the Lewben Art Foundation together with the…
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La Cultura non si ferma (“Culture never stops”; Nationwide, Italy)
“Culture never stops!” is a page of the Cultural Heritage Ministry website, which brings together virtual initiatives organized by State-owned cultural sites and the entertainment, music and audiovisual organisations during the Covid-19 emergency. Background The Ministry of Culture (Italian: Ministero della Cultura - MiC, previously Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism) is the ministry of the Government of Italy in charge of national museums and the historical monuments. MiC’s headquarters are located in the historic Collegio Romano Palace (in central Rome) and the current Minister of Culture is Dario Franceschini. It was set up in 1974 as the Ministry for Cultural Assets and Environments. The Ministry is made…
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COVID-19 Vaccination Hub at the Museum (Lecce, Italy)
Gilgamesh: bringing spectacle to the big screen (Galway, Ireland)
An open-air exhibition “Homo absentia” (Vilnius, Lithuania)
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COVID-19 Vaccination Hub at the Museum (Lecce, Italy)
In Italy, all museums were closed due to coronavirus restrictions. The Museum Castromediano of Lecce, Puglia’s oldest museum, whose large archaeological collection dates back to the Palaeolithic and Neolithic ages, has re-opened its doors during the lockdown in March 2021 as a COVID-19 vaccination hub. Thousands of people can get their vaccine and look at specially-selected exhibitions at the site for free. Background The Museum “Sigismondo Castromediano” is the oldest public museum in Apulia. Founded in 1868 by Sigismondo Castromediano, a 19th-century Lecce patriot and archaeologist, it traces the history of Salento from prehistory to the Messapian civilisation and 20th-century art. Target group (usually): local people, tourists. The Museum has…
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Local focus boosts local pride; the improvement of cultural tours of a city through a new focus on its citizens (Rijeka, Croatia)
View the Mauritshuis at Home. Another way to experience art – listen to paintings at home (Den Haag, Netherlands)
Land Art Weekend 2020 (Flevopolder, the Netherlands)
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Corona in the city. A crowd sourced on- and offline exhibition (Amsterdam, the Netherlands)
The digital exhibition Corona in the city is about the impact of Corona on the city and its inhabitants and documenting this for the future real time. After one year more than 3000 photo’s, video’s, story’s, drawings, magazines, columns, letters, poems, interviews and songs have been collected and are shared on the exhibition website. The digital exhibition has been visited by more than 150.000 visitors in one year (15 may 2020 - 15 may 2021). For the corona in the city exhibition, not only the general public but also many organizations joined in, of which local strongly embedded media partners were most prominent. And this lead to greater exposure and…
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View the Mauritshuis at Home. Another way to experience art – listen to paintings at home (Den Haag, Netherlands)
The Mauritshuis had a goal in mind: to attract a younger audience to the museum and bring them in contact with Dutch heritage. To make this possible they created the project ‘View the Mauritshuis with your ears’: an initiative that asks artists to draw inspiration from an artwork from the collection of the museum and to make a song about it. The format was created and used until the planned concert at the end wasn’t an option anymore due to the lockdown in reaction to the spreading coronavirus. The changing of the format to fit these times made the project even better and it became a huge hit, exceeding the…
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Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation – Digital Games for Adults (Athens, Greece)
Covid REMIX: Toronto Public Library and friends remix wartime posters for the pandemic (Toronto, Canada)
Local focus boosts local pride; the improvement of cultural tours of a city through a new focus on its citizens (Rijeka, Croatia)
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Whatever’s possible – A growing museum against the odds (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
In order to combat the cultural exclusion the lockdown created, Museum Het Schip has come up with a highly intimate way of keeping their public close to them. After two years of hard work, the just-opened exhibition ‘Bruno Taut – Beyond Fantasy’ could only be visited for six days before the museum had to close its doors. Instead of moving their exhibition online they offered guided digital tours for one or two people at the time, keeping up with their tradition of dialogue while presenting what the museum had to offer. Though small, the museum proved to house creative and involved staff members who did everything they could with what…
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COVID-19 Vaccination Hub at the Museum (Lecce, Italy)
An open-air exhibition “Homo absentia” (Vilnius, Lithuania)
View the Mauritshuis at Home. Another way to experience art – listen to paintings at home (Den Haag, Netherlands)
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A giant open-air gallery in the streets of Vilnius. Project “Art needs no roof” (Vilnius, Lithuania)
The project was born in response to quarantine restrictions that prevented art galleries from operating, so artists could not exhibit and sell their works. Willing to support the artists, Vilnius City Municipality together with the outdoor advertising company JCDecaux Lietuva implemented project “Art needs no roof” and invited artist to showcase their works on billboards free of charge. In this way, Vilnius became one giant open-air art gallery and connected artists with art lovers. Background The project “Art needs no roof” was an initiative of Vilnius City Municipality together with the outdoor advertising company JCDecaux Lietuva. Vilnius City Municipality is governmental institution operating in the public sector whereas the JCDecaux…
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Activity E-Book – Creative at home, Nitra Gallery (Athens, Greece)
View the Mauritshuis at Home. Another way to experience art – listen to paintings at home (Den Haag, Netherlands)
Covid REMIX: Toronto Public Library and friends remix wartime posters for the pandemic (Toronto, Canada)
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School Life and Education Museum – How to adapt to the COVID-19 reality (Athens, Greece)
With the outbreak of the pandemic, Museums and Cultural Organizations were amongst those who suffered the most severe consequences. The School Life and Education Museum reorganized its operation and redesigned its educational programs and activities so that they could be utilized and implemented online or in open spaces. Background The School Life and Education Museum operates under the auspices of the Greek Ministry of Education and is a member of the Network of Museums and Cultural Institutions of Athens. The collections of the Museum include objects from school life (one of the biggest collections of schoolbooks, costumes, archives, photographs) and tokens of intangible cultural heritage (audio documents, testimonies, interviews on…
