Last Thursday, the Museum announced that it would temporarily close all three of its locations to protect the health and safety of our visitors and staff. Today we have some additional information to share about how our institution is responding to the coronavirus (COVID-19) as well as how visitors can stay engaged with The Met during this time.
As it stands today, the Museum will remain closed at least through Saturday, April 4, 2020, and all programs and events have been canceled through Friday, May 15. We are constantly evaluating the situation and will continue to provide updates on our closure. We have remained closely aligned with public health and local officials to make decisions about the Museum's operations, and we did not hesitate to close our buildings as soon as it became clear that it was the right thing to do. The Met, indeed all institutions, will surely face difficult decisions as this situation unfolds, but we are steadfast in our mission to protect and preserve this great institution and its magnificent collection in perpetuity, and to be good citizens and leaders in our current times.
Our staff have risen valiantly to the many challenges, particularly those who have been reporting to work at the Museum over these past days to clean our buildings, shore up our infrastructure, and protect the art. Their service during this crisis has been invaluable. We also recognize the ongoing work that so many are doing at home: providing crucial operational support, pursuing scholarship, developing digital programming, making many of our offerings available online, and more. Our staff are the Museum's greatest asset, and we proudly and gratefully acknowledge their contributions, as well as our many friends and supporters.
The Met collection represents five thousand years of human civilization's creative output. As we think of everyone in New York City and around the world in this exceptional time, we want virtually to share the riches of this vast output as resource for inspiration and connection. As part of that mission, we invite you to experience The Met online, anywhere. There's a whole host of material available on metmuseum.org for all our visitors to enjoy—indeed, The Met has had a robust digital publishing program for many years, and now is a moment for us to revisit those offerings. Visitors can take a deep dive into art history through essays and chronologies on the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, a trusted resource for over twenty years, for example. Many of our iconic spaces have been captured in magnificent detail so you can visit them virtually, and our Primers will give you access to select exhibitions and installations, including Gerhard Richter: Painting After All and The British Galleries. We also regularly publish blogs featuring voices across the Museum responding to contemporary moments—like the one you're reading now. And of course, thousands of works of art are available for you to view, download, and reuse online. To help you navigate The Met online, we've created a digital digest collecting highlights from these programs and more.
In that spirit of connecting through art, we encourage you to sign up for our newsletter, below, and follow us on our social media channels, where one can enjoy a gallery visit, take a close look at a masterpiece alongside a renowned artist, enjoy a performance, or find an engaging activity for the family. We're surfacing our greatest hits and hidden treasures on social media with #MetAnywhere, while keeping up with weekly favorites like #TuesdayTrivia and #MetSketch. We hope that even when the buildings are temporarily closed the Museum can provide some measure of comfort through the beauty and wonder of the world's shared cultural history.
The Museum is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year—a testament to the resilience of this institution. During these turbulent times, we encourage you to find hope and inspiration in The Met collection and our exhibitions, as art lovers have done for generations before us. We're honored to share this moment with you, wherever you are, and look forward to the future to come.
