One of the many innovations we have seen in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and ensuing lockdown has been the proliferation of virtual museum tours. Some of the greatest art institutions in the world offer this including the British Museum, the Louvre, the National Gallery, the V&A, the Vatican Museums, the Van Gogh, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the John Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Although the museum buildings may be closed, the tours offer free virtual access to their wealth of artworks and artefacts and enable would-be visitors to tour their exhibits from the social distancing comfort of their own homes.

But what of the actual museum buildings? There has long been intense curatorial and cultural debate about whether museum architecture should defer to the exhibits within or vie with them as architectural works of art in their own right. 

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