A Conversation with Mary-Kay Lombino on COVID-19’s Effect on the Art World

By: Gina Pepitone

At the beginning of March 2020, it was business as usual for Mary-Kay Lombino, Deputy Director and the Emily Hargroves Fisher '57 and Richard B. Fisher Curator for the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center. She took a train into the city to Pier 94 and attended an art fair alongside hundreds of other people. By this time, knowledge of the pandemic was slowly seeping into the US, but people were by no means distancing or wearing masks. Lombino recalls avoiding any handshakes and using liberal amounts of hand sanitizer, but besides these precautions, she was operating in her usual way. Taking the train back home, Lombino attended another art event that evening. 

“My life was just on a very fast treadmill of seeing art, talking to artists, traveling internationally for research, going to studios, museums, galleries, and art fairs,” Lombino says. The pandemic, however, brought all that to a screeching halt, exposing the fragility of the art world in a way that no one could have predicted. For museum workers, and for curators in particular, their roles revolve around physically studying and interacting with the collection, so if they can’t work directly with the art, what could they do? This was one of the questions Lombino began asking herself when the Loeb was forced to close its doors in mid March to ensure the health and safety of the surrounding community. 

Right before shut down, Lombino had been busy preparing to launch a group of exhibitions, but when it soon became apparent that the openings would have to be pushed back indefinitely, she was shocked. “We’ve always met our deadlines,” Lombino says emphatically. “It's what we do.” With the world swept into a whirlwind of panic and chaos, Lombino and other staff members at the Loeb were forced to adapt and think on their feet.

In their initial efforts to support the community, many museums including the Loeb organized to donate their stockpiles of gloves and masks, typically used to handle and examine art, to front line medical workers. Beyond this, staffers also began making preparations to launch virtual content and programming. Lombino admits that the transition to digital platforms did not come naturally. Towards the start of quarantine, the Loeb was still holding out for the possibility of reopening for in-person exhibitions, so they found their resources stretched thin, trying to juggle virtual content on top of organizing the logistics of in-person events. 

On a more personal note, Lombino shares that the Loeb’s work culture has felt very fractured by the distance. Even now that many employees have returned to working in-person at least part of the time, they are still struggling to achieve a sense of togetherness. Beyond missing out on the collaborative interactions Lombino used to share with her coworkers pre-pandemic, she also misses seeing the Vassar students interacting with the museum’s resources. “Vassar is a community and I have been part of that community for so long that yanking me out of it and plopping me in my make-shift home office was kind of like pulling off a limb,” Lombino adds with a light laugh. 

Fortunately, the Loeb has developed new and innovative ways to stay engaged with the surrounding community while working from home. Since kids could not visit the museum on field trips or take tours of the collection, the Loeb found other ways to serve Poughkeepsie’s K-12 community. They organized virtual field trips over zoom and directed funds in their budget for education to supply grade school children who are a part of the free school lunch program with art supplies. “In my opinion, people really need culture and art experiences,” Lombino remarks. “I don’t think of it as icing on the cake. I think art makes us human and keeps us vital and connected to one another.” By ensuring that kids with limited resources would have access to art during quarantine, Lombino shares that this project helped the Loeb find a way to make a positive impact on the surrounding community despite the doors being closed to visitors. 

Another positive aspect brought about by the pandemic was the push to adapt the Loeb’s resources in order to make them widely available. “The Loeb collects these objects, but really we are just stewards of them,” Lombino explains, “and it’s our responsibility to share them as widely as we possibly can to anyone who is interested in them.” From hosting guest speakers over Zoom to photographing and digitizing collections, the Loeb has become committed to ensure a broad audience has easy access to all the knowledge, history, and art of the museum.

Additionally, Lombino notes that the COVID-19 crisis has exposed systemic issues, giving rise to what the museum world is calling “multiple pandemics.” She explains that this term refers to the inequities, systematic racism, and failure to take care of the most vulnerable people in our society. Specific to museums, these multiple pandemics have shown them that collections of art, more often than not, mirror the colonialist and imperialist ways our country was built. This outlook inherently excludes marginalized voices that are equally important to our history and the art world. 

Over the summer, in the wake of BLM protests sweeping across the nation, Lombino created the Diversity Equity Access and Inclusion group that includes six other Loeb staff members. The mission of this group is to decolonize the Loeb’s gallery presentations and collections in order to amplify the voices of underrepresented artists and people. Lombino is focused on broadening the conversation of art beyond what she describes as, “the typical Western canon that includes mostly white European males who are often considered the most important artists.” She is determined to critically examine beliefs and standards that have historically been held by museums and work to redirect the conversation to include multiple, diverse narratives within museum walls. Lombino admits that this mission is most likely going to be a painfully long process, but she is driven to follow through and create a noticeable impact regarding representation and inclusivity at the Loeb. 

With the world facing multiple pandemics, the Loeb, and the museum community at large, was challenged in many ways. From working to correct the colonialist narrative woven into museums’ history to transitioning art education and resources online, the Loeb has found a silver lining amidst the uncertainty and disruptions brought on by COVID-19 by making steps forward in terms of accessibility and inclusion.