Culture helps out 7 Apr 2020

Museums across the world have been sending hospitals gloves, masks and other items usually used by conservation and operations staff as protective gear to fight the coronavirus. In the UK, the National Archives has been encouraging people to donate to London Ambulance Service at [email protected], many national museums have given directly to large hospitals and NMDC has also been co-ordinating efforts to bring useful supplies out of museum storerooms and pass them to the NHS. If your museum has supplies and would like guidance about how to donate, do contact [email protected] who will be glad to advise. The Ashmolean was among a group of Oxford museums which donated to London Ambulance Service. A spokeswoman for the museum said “the London ambulance service were so desperate they were going to use a taxi or courier to collect them from Oxford, but could not arrange this before lock down so we volunteered to deliver them to London on behalf of all Oxford University Museums.”  Meanwhile, Scottish Opera has repurposed trucks which it had originally intended to use for its tour of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ as backup for Tesco, which needs extra capacity to restock its supermarkets to keep up with demand. Art Newspaper, National Archives, Scottish Opera, Dallas Museum of Art, Rijksmuseum, Planet Radio (Royal Children’s Hospital), Art Newspaper, Museums Journal (list of ways to help)