Beyond the building

As arts venues reopen, is it time to reassess their pre-pandemic roles?

After multiple lockdowns, many museums, art galleries, cinemas, theatres, and concert halls across the world are tentatively reopening. The return to physically-sited arts has not, however, been accompanied by anything but the most muted celebration. Arts venues now face the contradictory challenge of having to limit access to their spaces while also trying to persuade more people to visit. If last summer’s ‘reopenings’ are anything to go by, the return to physical programming will provide no quick solution to the arts’ economic crisis. According to a January 2021 survey by the Network of European Museum Organisations, 84.5% of museums reported loss of income after their first reopening last summer, and 43% of museums reported a reduction in visitors of over 50%. Worryingly, by far the largest cause was reduced travel and tourism, a further reminder that even museums in rich countries with vaccinated populations will not fully recover until the entire world recovers. Only last week, for example, on the verge of reopening, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. laid off its entire retail workforce.

For performing arts, the anxieties are even greater. Their business model of squeezing audiences close together in confined spaces for long durations is even more precarious than museums’ reliance on tourism. Though Scottish theatres are now reopening, they are still subject to two-metre social distancing, which leaves Dundee Rep, for example, only able to accommodate an audience of 80 in a venue with a usual capacity of 455. England’s theatres have been granted permission to operate at 50% capacity, but the government’s aim of lifting all restrictions on public events by mid-June remains tentative, and subject to positive findings from an Events Research Programme currently taking place. Out of all this uncertainty, one thing seems sure: for the arts, the economic pain is not over. 

Many arts organisations are, quite understandably, now focusing on mitigating the last year’s damage by getting as many people back into their buildings as is safely possible. But as they do so, it is perhaps worth asking how far the arts sector’s historical focus on filling auditoriums and galleries has exacerbated its vulnerability to the pandemic. Is the arts sector’s reliance on physical venues a part of the problem?

‘Our doors are closed, but we remain open’

In my first post, I asked why the Internet was not commonly seen as a legitimate space for artistic engagement before the pandemic - and why still, for some, online arts programmes remain suspect. One answer is that they don’t take place in a building. Most culturally validated visual and performing arts are currently made for, and experienced in, just two types of space: auditoriums and galleries. And so it has been for centuries. Site-specific art, public art, community art, and digital art are all recent – more or less accepted, but often not so well funded – divergences from the historical norm of venue-based art. And of course, this norm, like all norms, perpetuates itself. Just by existing, arts buildings demand large amounts of funding, and so facilitate the pre-eminence of the kind of art that takes place within them. As theatre critic Lyn Gardner observed in a recent article, ‘Our funding system has ensured that theatre buildings have been the dominant way that theatre has been delivered.’ This is even more the case with museums and galleries. 

The largest arts organisations, in turn, tend to be housed in the largest arts venues: the organisations and the buildings support each other. It’s hardly surprising, then, that when venues closed last spring and found themselves relying on the Internet to engage with audiences, a common initial instinct among museums and art galleries (especially the better funded ones) was to replicate their buildings online. ‘Our doors are closed, but we remain open’ was a common metaphor – a tellingly spatial metaphor which often found its expression digitally in the form of 360 degree walkthroughs and even full 3D reconstructions of gallery spaces. Considering how central the arts venue is to the work and the everyday lives of its staff, it’s understandable how imaginatively tied to it early lockdown offerings tended to be. 

In the case of 360 degree galleries, there was only one problem: beyond their initial curiosity value, they often provided a deeply unsatisfying user experience. By trying to replicate a physical space, they set themselves up to fail. With every awkward click forward through the digital space, they further emphasised their own inferiority to the actual gallery, and reinforced the arts building’s elevated status. 

Over the last year, many galleries and museums have moved beyond offering digital representations of their physical spaces, just as many theatre and dance companies have looked beyond live streaming ‘empty venue’ performances. Many innovative alternatives have emerged; two notable recent examples include The Contemporary Art Museum of Luxembourg’s ‘MeFamily’ exhibition and Ontroerend Groed’s ‘TM’ (currently on a virtual touring of UK theatres). Meanwhile, as audiences have gravitated towards narrative rather than spatial experiences, museums and galleries have become increasingly confident in their use of linear video, learning to lean on the expertise of their curators and conservators, and the many rich stories embedded within art works themselves. Visit the Rijksmuseum website, for example, and you will find a range of options for engaging with its artworks, including an astonishing open access archive; but most of all, you will find videos and stories - paths through the collection. 

A recent survey by the Network of European Museum Organisations (NEMO) is particularly interesting in this regard. Conducted across 600 museums in 48 countries between 30th October and 29th November 2020, the survey documents a massive shift towards digital across the sector: 93% of museums increased or started online services during the pandemic. It also includes a detailed breakdown of organisations’ digital activities, highlighting two forms of content that online visitors find most engaging (by far): social media and videos. 

The survey also found that four out of ten museums were accompanying their digital pivot with a deeper philosophical reappraisal. Surrounded by isolated, anxious, and exhausted populations, many organisations across the arts and culture sector have looked beyond the walls of their buildings and out towards their communities. Here is a typical comment, taken from an excellent report published last autumn for the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation by social think tank Common Vision:

We find ourselves in a network of tiny local organisations. If I had sat down with funders previously and said it is part of our strategy to build these relationships, they would have thought I was mad. (Alan Lane, Artistic Director, Slung Low)

From online psychoanalysis sessions to food deliveries, many recent activities by arts organisations have turned upside down the historical presumption that their most essential work is done within the walls of its building. In this context, for many organisations, switching to digital has not only been about staying open. It’s also been about moving beyond the concept of the theatre, museum, or gallery as a physical site, and towards a stronger sense of themselves as participants in diverse networks of relationship. 

Going global, staying local

What interests me most about the above statistics, however, is that six out of ten museums have not used the last year to ask deeper questions about their role in society. Of course, some of these may have entered the pandemic with a clear community focus, and just intensified their mission. But what about the rest? What have they been doing? The statistics suggest that one thing that most of them have not been doing is thinking about the deeper implications of their pivot towards digital. Rather, the NEMO survey implies that many arts organisations have been using online activities as a stop-gap aimed at keeping existing audiences engaged until their buildings reopen. 

Of course, it would take more than a pandemic to dislodge the gallery and theatre from their status as the hegemonic sites of artistic engagement. Buildings, including arts buildings, are essential for cultural activity. Delivering arts programmes requires rehearsal spaces, offices, studios, education spaces, and auditoriums. Artistic experience also usually requires buildings; most of the time, some kind of building is needed to shelter us from cold, rain, or heat as we engage with art – be it an arts venue, a library, a cafe, or our home. 

Nonetheless, recent weeks have seen a number of high profile arts figures publicly emphasising their commitment to digital even as they prepare to reopen their doors. For example, within a few days of each other, The Guardian featured prominent news stories focused on the artistic directors of both the Old Vic and Young Vic theatres. To non-UK readers: though these two theatres are just down the road from each other, in many ways they are opposites. The Old Vic is commercially focused 19th century theatre that relies on stars to pull in large audiences for performances of popular favourites; the Young Vic is a 1970s theatre built around a black box, with a strong community focus and a reputation for adventurous programming. Both artistic directors, however, emphasised their commitment to producing more digital content, and both focused in particular on the ability of digital programming to reach audiences far beyond their buildings’ physical footprints.

From recent interviews conducted for the project, there is currently a sector-wide focus on returning to buildings but also seeing beyond their limitations. This is most typically being done in two ways.  The first, is by going hyper-local: looking immediately beyond the arts building’s walls at the communities that surround it. The second, is by going global: seeing the world as one’s stage. One might imagine that large organisations would look more for global audiences, while small organisations would tend to focus more on their communities. In fact, there is strong evidence that organisations of all sizes havebeen inspired by the internationalisation of their audiences, and impelled to step up their community role. 

It’s hard to know what long-term results this simultaneous reorientation of many arts organisations both towards the global and the local may lead to. However, for the moment, two particular challenges spring to mind. The first is a structural one: how can arts organisations of various sizes rebalance their activities and repurpose their resources so as to allow them both to widen their geographic reach and also to intensify their hyper-local relationships? 

Tied up with this structural challenge is a creative one, also shared by organisations of all sizes: how to create digital experiences that are not imitations of physical experiences. As Lyn Gardner notes in her article on theatre buildings, the future of the arts is hybrid. But…

For these hybrid productions to genuinely increase access, the different versions have to offer an equality of experience and value… The live and the digital will always be different from each other, but that’s their beauty. It is a beauty that theatre need to recognise and embrace if it wants audiences to embrace both too. 

Perhaps the greatest, and most exciting, challenge ahead for all arts providers will be to look beyond the building physically, and also imaginatively.