The Road to Reopening

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On October 15, The Phillips Collection will be reopening some galleries to the public, after being closed since March due to the covid-19 pandemic. Director of Strategy and Operations Micha Winkler Thomas and Security Operations Manager Bob Harris share the months-long process of welcoming staff and visitors back to the museum.

Who did you work with on the reopening process?

Micha Winkler Thomas: The reopening process has been a months-long collaborative effort, starting in May when we formed a Reopening Task Force consisting of colleagues from every department. This dedicated team met weekly, gathering and analyzing information to determine how and when The Phillips Collection would reopen. This included following the Mayor’s Reopen DC guidelines for a phased reopening of cultural institutions, CDC health recommendations, looking at the current data for DC, as well as reaching out to health expert Joshua Sharfstein, current Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. We conferred with national and international museum colleagues who either reopened or were in the process of reopening to gain best practices and lessons learned, using their admissions statistics to determine our best plan of action.

Reopening Task Force members in the galleries in September conducting one of many rounds of beta testing of the visitor experience to make sure it is safe and enjoyable.

How did you tackle the development of a plan?

MWT: The key to our reopening plan was our careful and deliberate phased approach. The state of the pandemic is so uncertain, so it is important for us to remain flexible. By beginning our reopening with only the Goh Annex and Sant Building on a limited basis and for a limited number of guests, we are hoping to create a serene and safe haven for our guests and staff to experience the amazing art of The Phillips Collection. We will open the House galleries and add more timed entries based on DC and CDC health guidelines, and also when we feel the time is right.

Bob Harris in the galleries determining the best route for visitors.

How has the building and art been kept safe over these last few months?

Bob Harris: Our security staff has been on site through the entire closure, and we are very thankful to those heroic, dedicated, and exceptional staff members that kept our buildings and artworks secure for so many months. We carried out the 24/7 security functions and tasks to protect the offices and galleries. I joined the Phillips in May, leaving the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts after nearly a decade in their Department of Security Services. In fact, I have been in law enforcement and security for nearly 40 years and have become a subject matter specialist on museum and cultural property protection principles and methodology. As a commander, I was involved in helping to conduct the closure at the VMFA in March, and I brought my expertise to the Phillips.

Contactless temperature check stations at staff and public entrances, and hand sanitizer stations throughout the building.

What has been done to ensure the safety of staff and visitors?

BH: Every safety measure we have put in place has been to protect both our staff and visitors—it is important that our staff is subject to the same protocols and considerations as our guests. We conducted an anonymous staff survey to determine what everyone would be comfortable with and what people were concerned about. We have worked closely with our facilities team to optimize our air filtration throughout the building. The summer months focused on enhanced onsite safety protocols for returning staff as well as preparing for the museum’s reopening. PPE stations, hand sanitizer stations, and safety signs were put in place throughout the museum, along with covid-19 return to work staff and visitor protocols to ensure social distancing and mask adherence. Contactless temperature/mask readers were installed at staff and public entrances, as well as Plexiglas partitions at the reception desk, admissions lobby, and museum shop. We measured every gallery to determine capacity in every space and on each floor, carefully determining the best route for visitors and to minimize crowding and cross traffic. The team has created a directional visitor flow plan that will allow for social distancing as well as an engaging visitor experience upon the museum’s public reopening. Security staff have been brought back in a phased approach to meet reopening operational needs. While we still have a lot to do to fully reopen, I am proud of our hard work across departments that has made reopening possible and we are thrilled to finally welcome visitors back in the galleries to enjoy the art!

Signage and PPE stations placed in galleries and office spaces.

Collections Care During Closure

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Head of Conservation Lilli Steele shares the how the collection has been cared for while the museum has been closed.

While the doors have been shut to The Phillips Collections due to covid-19, the Phillips staff has still been busy caring for the permanent collection and the artworks in the special exhibitions. Every day since mid-March, our security staff has conducted daily checks throughout the entire museum and our building engineers have closely monitored the climate control system. Once a week, someone from our conservation department has walked through the galleries to inspect all of the works of art on view to check for any changes in condition, with particular attention to the loans included in Riffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modernist Tradition and Moira Dryer: Back in Business. Since both exhibitions closed so soon after they opened in February, the generous lenders have agreed to extend the exhibitions until January 2021 and December 2020, respectively. In order to prevent over exposure of light to works that are vulnerable to fading—such as drawings, watercolors, prints, and photographs, which are generally only placed on view for three months a year—the galleries were kept dim as much as possible. In addition, preparation staff carefully covered light sensitive works of art under dark fabrics to ensure that they received no additional exposure during the extended exhibition period.

Conservator Lilli Steele examines Alma Thomas, Watusi (Hard Edge), 1963, Acrylic on canvas, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Gift of Vincent Melzac, 1976. Adjacent to the painting, several prints have been covered with a dark cloth to eliminate additional light exposure.

The museum’s outdoor sculptures have also been carefully tended to during the shut down, After the long rainy spring, the sculptures were due to be washed to remove pollen, bird droppings, and other dirt residues that had accumulated over the winter. Periodic cleaning of Angela Bulloch’s Heavy Metal Stack, Fat Cyan Three (located at the corner of 21st and Q), Seymour Lipton’s Ancestor (located in front of the Phillips House), and Barbara Hepworth’s Dual Form and Ellsworth Kelly’s Untitled (EK927) (in the Hunter Courtyard) has continued during the summer and into the fall to ensure their preservation.

Wearing masks and socially distanced on a warm September afternoon, conservators Lilli Steele and Patti Favero and preparator Laylaa Randera wash Ellsworth Kelly’s Untitled (EK927).

While it was strange to be in the museum for many months with virtually no colleagues present and certainly no visitors, I felt comforted to be able to enjoy old friends from the permanent collection and be reminded of the Phillips’s exceptional exhibitions. We are so excited to finally carefully remove the coverings over the artworks and welcome visitors back into our galleries and also to enjoy our newly cleaned sculptures.

Some Great (Women) Artists

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Head of PK12 Initiatives Erica Harper explores works by Barbara Hepworth, Regina Pilawuk Wilson, and Angela Bulloch.

The lede for Jackson Pollock’s 1949 LIFE magazine article reads: “Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?” Pollock is photographed in (an admittedly bad-ass) paint spattered leather jacket and jeans combo, his clothing a canvas against another canvas of his own. His stance is cool and casual, leaned back with his arms folded across his chest. His face is stoic, punctuated by the cigarette dangling from his mouth. The message seems clear—abstract expressionism is tough, complicated, and undeniably masculine.

(Left) Jackson Pollock in LIFE magazine; (Right) Helen Frankenthaler in LIFE magazine

By the time Helen Frankenthaler is photographed by Gordon Parks for her own spread in LIFE in 1956, her influence on the art form is undeniable. Parks photographed her barefoot, wearing a knee-length skirt and button-down shirt tied into a side knot, surrounded by her works. She sits, quite literally, as a stark contrast to Pollock (photographed by Martha Holmes). But Frankenthaler, much like many artists at the time who happened to be women, balked at the categorization of “woman artist.” She once said in the New York Times, “There are three subjects I don’t like discussing: my former marriage, women artists, and what I think of my contemporaries.”

So what, right? Perhaps Pollock was truly the greatest living painter in the United States in 1949, but who was even included in that conversation? What then of all the aspiring artists who didn’t fit the mold? I’d like to turn your attention to some great works in our collection which all happen to be outdoors, and all happen to be by women. I started to wonder if those women, like Frankenthaler, felt dismissive of the label or if perhaps “woman artist” meant something different?

Barbara Hepworth (born 1903, Yorkshire, England) was 46 years old when Pollock graced LIFE magazine. Her sculptures can be interpreted as being about relationships: between forms, between humans and landscapes, color and texture, and especially between people as both individuals and a part of society. Hepworth was truly a force in her time, a major international figure, showing her work in exhibitions all over the world. She took an active role in the way her work was presented and was particular about its documentation. That she was a woman in a largely male-dominated world did little to stop her.

Barbara Hepworth, Dual Form, 1965/cast 1966, Bronze height: 72 in., The Phillips Collection, Acquired with the Dreier Fund for Acquisitions and additional funds from Natalie R. Abrams, Alan and Irene Wurtzel, and a bequest from Nathan and Jeanette Miller, 2006

Master weaver Regina Pilawuk Wilson (born 1948, Northern Territory of Australia) was one-year old at the time of Pollock’s cover. Her subject matter is based around weaving fiber art using techniques she learned from her grandmother who taught her where, when, and how to collect the right grasses, vines, and sources of natural color like flowers, berries, and roots. She perfected them over the decades and became an authority figure for her sense of familial and cultural identity. Most known for her paintings, printmaking and woven fiber-artworks, she paints syaws (fish nets), warrgarri (dilly bag), and yerrdagarri (message sticks). Her work has been shown in many Australian and international museums, collections, and galleries. Wilson’s work is markedly ancestral and matrilineal in origin, and divorcing it from “woman” feels almost sacrilege from my vantage.

Regina Pilawuk Wilson painting Yerrdagarri in the Hunter Courtyard, 2018. Photo: Rhiannon Newman

Finally, there’s Angela Bulloch (born 1966, Ontario, Canada). She wasn’t even alive when Pollock appeared on the cover of LIFE. The world had changed so rapidly, and in so many ways that it’s no surprise that Bulloch’s work incorporates video, sound, light, installation, sculpture, and painting. In fact, her work that sits outside the museum was partly created with the use of a computer program. She is also part of the Young British Artists, a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London in 1988. And, despite the cultural advances of the time, female artists were still a distinct minority among the male dominated environment of the Young British Artists.

Angela Bulloch with her sculpture. Heavy Metal Stack: Fat Cyan Three, 2018, Powder coated steel, Made possible with support from Susan and Dixon Butler, Nancy and Charles Clarvit, John and Gina Despres, A. Fenner Milton, Eric Richter, Harvey M. Ross, George Vradenburg and The Vradenburg Foundation

Angela Bulloch with her sculpture. Heavy Metal Stack: Fat Cyan Three, 2018, Powder coated steel, Made possible with support from Susan and Dixon Butler, Nancy and Charles Clarvit, John and Gina Despres, A. Fenner Milton, Eric Richter, Harvey M. Ross, George Vradenburg and The Vradenburg Foundation. Photo: Rhiannon Newman

I lament that I don’t actually know how these women would feel about being called a “woman artist.” I can imply but that feels wholly irresponsible and arrogant to do. But then I came across a quote from Hepworth that addressed this very subject. She gave birth to triplets in 1934, and, atypically, found a way to both take care of her children and continue producing her art. And though she likely wouldn’t want to speak for women as a whole, I’ll leave you with her words to consider:

“A woman artist is not deprived by cooking and having children, nor by nursing children with measles (even in triplicate)—one is in fact nourished by this rich life, provided one always does some work each day; even a single half hour, so that the images grow in one’s mind.”

 

References:
Frankenthaler: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/08/how-new-yorks-postwar-female-painters-battled-for-recognition
Hepworth: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/dame-barbara-hepworth-1274/who-is-barbara-hepworth
Pollock: https://www.life.com/people/jackson-pollock-early-photos-of-the-action-painter-at-work/
Bulloch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Bulloch
Wilson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regina_Pilawuk_Wilson