LOUISVILLE, Ky. — It's opening day - not for baseball but for the Louisville Slugger Museum, which has already drawn some fans for its first day back open after being shut down for the past 12 weeks.
"To see people coming in with their team gear on, happy to be here, it really puts a spring in our step," Anne Jewell, the Slugger Museum's executive director, and vice president, said. "We're trying to do what we can to make up as much business as we can. It is still a fraction of what we would typically be seeing this time of year."
It's not just the Slugger Museum that's feeling the financial crunch. Across the street, the Frazier History Museum is also reopening its doors after a challenging spring.
"We're a facility rental business. We're a camp business. We're a field trip business. We're an admission business. We're a museum tour business," President and CEO Andy Treinen said. "None of that has happened over the last 12 weeks."
Both the Frazier Museum and the Slugger Museum are prioritizing guest and employee safety, which means there are new guidelines. Everyone has to wear a mask, tour sizes are smaller and many of the hands-on interactive exhibits have been temporarily closed.
"There's disinfectant and hand sanitizer everywhere in the museum" Treinen said. "So I want people to know they're safe."
For Treinen, the closure has also pushed back the museum's newest exhibit, What is a Vote Worth, which celebrates the centennial of the signing of the 19th Amendment, which guaranteed women their right to vote. Many of these exhibits are planned years in advance, and Treinen said the museum will be extending the exhibition after its opening was delayed.
"You have to have a five-year plan for exhibits, but when this thing happened - you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans," he said.
Museums don't know when things will go back to the way they were, but they are ready to take it a step at a time.
"We have survived so much over the years, World Wars and fires and depressions, and we will survive this," Jewell said.
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