Museums and Online Spaces. The Society-Building Role of the Museums during the Pandemic

In the past more than six months, not only the cultural institutional network but also all of humanity has entered in a peculiar existential state. All that was previously commonplace, accepted, or natural has become in many ways impossible or, in some cases, even illegal. In the last period, we could also witness the changes regarding museums and museum environments, and we ourselves, who inhabit/use the spaces of the museums, have also changed. These changes affect the frameworks of representation and reception as well as our habits of viewing and interpretation. The pandemic has caused in museum practice a backward step towards a previous practice. Museums have suddenly re-become archives preserving objects and meanings, and it will take time for them to recollect themselves and start searching for solutions.