The Museum of the City of Łódź during a pandemic – new challenges for the dissemination of Łódź’s cultural heritage

Abstract

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, in Poland in 2020 was an event that affected the functioning of the Museum of the City of Łódź on an unprecedented scale. It had to quickly adapt to work in a completely new, changed reality, for which it and many similar institutions were not prepared. More than a year after the put in force of the first sanitary restrictions and despite the continuous epidemic threat, an attempt can be made to characterize the activities undertaken by the museum, aimed at adapting the everyday life of the institution to the new conditions. In order to outline the challenges and problems faced by the Museum of the City of Łódź, the activities undertaken by the institution were described in three spheres: organization of internal work, maintaining and building an audience through digital activity, and making exhibitions and collections available in the sanitary regime. The intention of the analysis is to indicate the key remedial tasks undertaken by the museum.