The director of MuMe Messina: "We can't let visitors in with masks. Yes to tickets with sensors."

Visitors strictly without masks, sensors to track their movements inside the museum, body temperature detectors, and flexible shifts for staff: these are some of the measures proposed to the Sicily region by Orazio Micali, director of the MuMe in Messina, the largest museum in southern Italy, where works by great artists such as Caravaggio and Antonello da Messina are preserved. Already on April 16, Micali had written to the regional department of cultural heritage, labor organizations and the regional department of local autonomy and civil service his contribution to activate a confrontation between the parties in anticipation of the so-called “phase 2” of the management of the coronavirus emergency, which, as is now known, for museums should start on May 18.

“Limplementation of phase 2,” Micali premised in his text, “cannot fail to consider essential scientific premises and related operational consequences that take into account the fact that, despite the significant drop in new infections, the circulation of the virus is still high; the number of active cases is still high; the positive cases counted so far are a fraction of the total number of infected; and many infections remain undiagnosed but are equally dangerous in terms of transmission.” Therefore, “phase 2,” according to Micali, “will be a phase of coexistence with the virus whose impact will have to be actively and strictly limited with preventive and control measures.” However, the start of this phase will have to be anticipated, in the opinion of the director of MuMe, 2by an intermediate phase necessary to identify, define and activate the preventive and control measures relevant to each type of office, specifically that concerning Museums."

Having made this premise, Micali begins the list of proposals from the topic ofwork organization within the Messina museum, referring to the criteria identified byInail in recent weeks. It begins with staff spacing, which is to be put in place through appropriately distant locations or separated by barriers such as plexiglass panels and furniture. As for common spaces, Micali cites the Inail document in which it prescribes that “continuous ventilation of the environments must be provided, also providing for a rotation in the use as well as a reduced time of stay.” And again, work shifts will have to be modified: “In the management of the entry and exit of workers, staggered schedules must be favored and where possible, provide a dedicated entry and exit door,” and “larticulation of work may be redefined with differentiated schedules that favor social distancing by reducing the number of simultaneous presences in the workplace and preventing gatherings at the entry and exit with schedule flexibility.”

MuMe’s director also calls for equipping staff with personal protective equipment, which “ the World Health Organization declares to be practically mandatory for any person outside of domestic confinement. ”Micali stresses that museums should have on hand a PPE endowment consisting of masks and disposable gloves sufficient to guarantee “ a working margin of no less than two weeks, or rather the certainty of being able to take charge fortnightly of the material directly at a single distribution center, without interruption until the state of epidemiological emergency ceases.” The burden of seeking endowments, Micali further points out, cannot be shifted onto the worker. For the staff, it will also be necessary to equip each museum with thermoscanners or remote body temperature detection systems, preferably linked to time-stamping systems for entering the workplace.

Now to the measures for the public: “the use of the museum by visitors” in fact constitutes, according to Micali, “one of the most critical points.” The first fixed point is the impossibility of asking visitors to enter while wearing facemasks: “it is not possible,” Micali explains, “to allow the public to enter the museum area and consequently the rooms where the cultural heritage is on display with their faces covered by masks or other protective devices that in any case constitute elements of misrepresentation of the person and significant reduction of the face by the detection systems, for reasons of security and management of surveillance that cannot be bypassed or reduced with respect to the functions for which they are intended.” There will then have to be bidirectional gates that allow “visitor entry and exit while maintaining the proper proximity distance.” At the entrance it will then be necessary to install automatic systems: Micali proposes a “turnstile with opening activated by a body temperature detection system using a thermoscanner,” which would prevent the entry of the visitor with non-compliant parameters (for example, a high body temperature). The director then considers it necessary “that in addition to body temperature, the system detects and records in compliance with current regulations the anthropometric data of the visitor’s face so as to be able to ensure the full functioning of active video surveillance systems with data management within the museum perimeter.” In the vicinity of the detector, visitors will have to clear their faces of covers and PPE, and the turnstile will be activated only after the data is captured for security purposes.

Once inside, according to Micali, all visitors should be required to be visible and tracked by a dynamic position monitoring system so that they can come into contact with each other or approach staff beyond what is permitted. To do this, according to Micali, it is possible to have visitors install a bluetooth or wirelessly shareable smartphone app at the same time as they enter the museum area turnstile. In the event that a visitor does not have a smartphone, Micali suggests the use of a disposable sensor to be attached to the access ticket, and with which the opening of the exit turnstile is associated so as to keep in visitor in the obligation to hold the sensor for the duration of the visit and presence in the museum area. For Micali, the sensor is still preferable to the smartphone application. In the event that two visitors exceed the allowed distances, “a precautionary warning with a low-intensity sound, light and vibration signal will be activated at all points involved in the critical radius, warning all those involved of the need to re-establish the distance with respect to the other points and vice versa.”

Pictured: the Caravaggio room at the MuMe in Messina. Ph. Credit Foto Parrinello

The director of MuMe Messina: "We can't let visitors in with masks. Yes to tickets with sensors."

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