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Rijksmuseum from Home / #RijksmuseumFromHome (Amsterdam, the Netherlands)
As an alternative for visiting the museum during the pandemic, employees of the Dutch Rijksmuseum for art and Dutch history created a series of short videos at home, highlighting a cherished object from the museum collection through a personal story. In a total of 24 videos (January 2022) in the ‘Rijksmuseum from Home’ series, museum specialists shared their personal fascinations for one object, while incidentally also referring to the pandemic and its impact on society. The movies were posted on the website of the museum, as well as social media, such as YouTube and Instagram. Background The Rijksmuseum is a well-known Dutch national museum for art and Dutch history. It…
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Quarantined Italians singing from their balconies (Nationwide, Italy)
Millions of people around Italy have been singing from their balconies at 18.00 in an effort to keep up morale during the lockdown in March 2020. Background This flashmob was organised spontaneously by people around Italy and was promoted quickly via social media. Gathered under the hashtag #unitimalontani (united but distanced), the call launched through social media, invited people around Italy to open their windows, go out in the garden or on the balcony, and sing together. The appointments were fixed for 18.00. The initiative became viral and was supported by millions of people around Italy, including popular musicians, politics, municipalities. Description People across Italy have been singing from their balconies…
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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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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 that was first created and used was remodeled when the planned concert at the end wasn’t an option anymore due to the measures to counter the Corona virus. The changing of the format to fit these times made the project even better and it became a huge…
