Visitor Health and Safety Guidelines
- Stay with your group (limit of six people per group) and practice social distancing with other visitors.
- All visitors over the age of two are required to wear a face covering. This requirement does not apply to individuals who are unable to wear a face-covering due to a medical condition.
- Wash your hands often in our restrooms or use hand sanitizer.
- Do not touch your face.
- Please explore the gallery counterclockwise from the front entrance. Start to your right in our permanent exhibit, “Endless Possibilities.”
- If you have any of the following symptoms, please do not enter the museum: cough, shortness of breath, difficulty breathing, fever, chills, repeated shaking with chills, muscle pain, headache, sore throat, and/or new loss of taste or smell. If you appear to have any of these symptoms, you will be directed to leave.
- Please do not enter the museum if you have COVID-19, have been in close contact with a confirmed case of COVID-19, or are awaiting COVID-19 test results.
Programs and Events
Until further notice, we plan to keep all programming virtual.
Contacting Staff
AAMI staff will be returning to the building on a rotating schedule, with some team members continuing to work from home. We continue to encourage using staff business email addresses for contact rather than phones. Please note that the general phone line is not monitored when we are not open to the public. If you have a general inquiry you would like answered, please use our contact form. We discourage calling or leaving voicemails at this time, as it may be difficult for staff to respond to calls.
Engaging With the Museum
We will continue to offer digital resources to the public. We plan to create additional digital programming and will make announcements on our website and social media channels when those programs are available.
Prevention Plan
We’re working to keep our staff, volunteers, and visitors safe by taking the following measures:
- All team members working with the public must wear face coverings.
- Team members will wear gloves when handling payments or store merchandise. Transactions will be contactless.
- Frequently touched surfaces including hands-on interactives, touch screens, door handles, and restroom facilities are cleaned with disinfectant before, during, and after each day we are open.
- Capacity will be limited in all areas of the museum, for patron and staff safety. Current capacities will be posted at the gallery entrance.
- Some of our hands-on activities have been removed or modified. Please enjoy the rest of our exhibits at your own discretion, and thank you for your understanding.
- We have installed a plexiglass barrier at our front desk to minimize person-to-person contact.
- All visitors over the age of two are required to wear a mask. This requirement does not apply to individuals who are unable to wear a face-covering due to a medical condition.
- All visitors are required to maintain social distance by implementing one-way traffic in our galleries and installing floor markers every six feet.
COVID-19 Information Resources
Iowa Department of Public Health
Thank You!
The Museum’s on-site COVID signage, supplies, and adaptive program and marketing equipment were provided by a grant through the Silos and Smokestacks National Heritage Area COVID-19 Resilience Program.
How You Can Help the Museum
As a result of our COVID-19 closures, the AAMI will experience a loss of approximately $1,250 of earned revenue for every week we remain closed. During this time of uncertainty, it is important to ensure that cultural resources like our museum can continue to operate and will be able to return to sharing our resources with the public once the crisis as passed. Your support as a member or donor can help ensure that we can provide digital resources throughout our closure and that we will be able to have a strong reopening when it is safe to do so. We know that many families and individuals are experiencing financial uncertainty at this time, but if you have resources to give, please consider supporting our mission to preserve, exhibit, and teach Iowa’s African American heritage.
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