Saint Joseph Museums Adjust Amid Covid-19

Sara Wilson the Executive Director of St.

Joseph Museums speaks about scheduling changes and program adjustments in lieu of the pandemic.

Tonight with the six st.

Joseph missouri system.

And sarah wilson, their executive director.

>> we're talking thanks for c1 us about what has gone on in the last few months with you.

>> well, so we shut down the middle of march.

And all of our staff were able to navigate and work from home.

So we did great online virtual programming through our program at home, and then when st.

Joseph and the state of missouri opened up early may, we began our process for reopening and trying to understand what we needed to do to make sure we kept our staff as well as our visitors safe.

We have been open since may sixth.

Visitors who come will see special guidelines in place.

We have social distancing guidelines throughout the museum for wearing face masks.

If they choose to, we welcome that.

We have sanitizing san diego states throughout the museum.

We have removed a lot of interactives for the time being.

We're trying to gauge how to safely put those back in as we learn about the coronovirus.

Our emphasis has been to be open and accessible to the public and do that safely for everyone.

So we have had visitors coming through.

We're not getting as many visitors as we are accustomed to this time of year.

But we're very happy to have the ones we do have.

We have limited how many people can be in the building.

We have two sites and so we have lifted to 75 people.

And at mansion, we have it limited to 10 to stay spread out and keep people safe and clean as we need to.

Then we also have online ticketing.

So, we prefer not to take cash at this time.

We are taking credit cards on site but we're also let people purchase their tickets online beforehand so they can come in and have no contact ticketing.

>> so if families are doing a staycation this summer, what can they expect to see might be new and they haven't seen before?

>> well the one thing we have coming up that we're very excited about is we're getting the smithsonian water ways exhibit to the wyeth tuttle mansion, so that's going to be a big exhibit at the mansion.

They will get to see really nice coral pieces we haven't had on play for a long time and how the things we do in missouri impact the water ways in the ocean and impact our climate and maybe what we're doing in st.

Joseph may be affecting the coral reef.

And think about how important water is to us as humans here in st.

Joseph and all over the world.

We excited about that.

We also have the lovely arthur kraft exhibit.

And that exhibit will run through july here.

So it's going to be a short exhibit and we really encourage people to see it.

Arthur was an internationally known artist based out of kansas city and had a stay here in missouri.

That's a fun thing for them to see.

>> i remember us talking at "live at five" about this exhibit.

Did you actually push this back?

>> we are extending through the end of july and maybe a little longer.

For several months we were shut down and don't feel like people have gotten to see if.

Several of the pieces are on loan and trying to work out the