PANDEMIC-INSPIRED GLOBAL FOCUS The pandemic was an extreme challenge for the MoAD and all cultural institutions. Closed to in-person visitors for 18 months, they had to furlough staff, cancel exhibitions, switch their fundraising strategy, and do whatever they could to make sure they would survive. They pivoted from in-person programs to digital programs, including In the Artist’s Studio, Art as We See It, the African Book Club, and more. Their digital programs were quite successful, bringing art and artists into people’s homes. “We continue to have lots of engagement with our digital programs, so we’ve kept them going even though we’ve been open again for over a year. Our digital following has grown a lot over the past six months along with our membership,” says White. Everyone at the MoAD agrees that it has been challenging to get up and running again after Covid and wants to focus on
strategies to get visitors back into the museum. However, they are still quite optimistic about visitors’ returning. “It is amazing to see art back on the walls and to see people coming through our doors and wandering our galleries again. We are seeing more and more long-time friends visiting and new friends arriving,” White says. As an art museum, they are focused on in-person experiences. But the virtual technology of the Covid shutdowns also opened new doors for the MoAD. “The ‘globalness’ of the African Diaspora emerged through a forced digital experience. As a non-collecting institution, we benefit from more flexibility in programming, and so we quickly adapted to virtual engagement with artists and audiences. In the first few weeks of the pandemic, we had new members dialing in from countries across Africa, South America, and Europe in numbers we had never seen in person,” explains White. They now seek to maintain the Digital Diaspora while also encouraging in-person visitors at the MoAD.
175
Powered by FlippingBook