COVID-19 Update

UPDATE | Tuesday, June 8, 2021

For the safety of our staff and visitors, please wear a mask. CDC guidelines still recommend vaccinated and unvaccinated people wear masks inside public buildings. 

UPDATE | Monday, June 29, 2020

The City of Daytona Beach now requires face masks to be worn in all indoor public spaces. For the additional safety of our staff and your fellow visitors, we are asking you to please wear a face mask when visiting our museums. More details on the City's resolution can be found here. We thank you for working with us and the City of Daytona Beach to stop the spread of the Coronavirus and helping us keep our museums open as safely as possible for everyone.

UPDATE | Thursday, June 15, 2020

We are pleased to announce that the Charles and Linda Williams Children's Museum is back open to the public. For the safety of guests, we are encouraging frequent hand washing and sanitation between each activity. 

UPDATE | Thursday, June 11, 2020

We are pleased to announce that the Lowell and Nancy Lohman Family Planetarium is back open for explorations at a limited capacity. The planetarium is sanitized at the beginning of the day as well as between each planetarium show. 

UPDATE | Tuesday, May 12, 2020

We are pleased to announce that the Museum of Arts & Sciences and the Cici and Hyatt Brown Museum of Art will reopen to the public and begin operating for regular hours starting on Monday, May 18, 2020.

In accordance with the current regulations, both buildings will be limited to operating at 50% guest capacity and certain individual galleries will have signs posted limiting the number of visitors who may be in them at any one time. Please note that the current regulations mean that we are unable to open the Charles and Linda Williams Children's Museum and the Lowell and Nancy Lohman Family Planetarium at this time. The Honey Baked Ham Cafe at the Brown Museum is also temporarily closed.

In an effort to keep our visitors and staff safe we are encouraging all guests to wear masks around the Museum. Staff will also be wearing masks while in public areas and both handwashing and hand sanitizing locations will be clearly marked around both buildings. We have also made adjustments to minimize the need for visitors to touch door handles and railings wherever practically possible.

We are excited to let you know that the exhibit "Billie Holliday at Sugar Hill: Photographs by Jerry Dantzic" will continue to be on display at MOAS until August 9, 2020. We thank our friends at the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service for allowing us to extend this loan. Unfortunately the exhibit "The World of Frida" has been deinstalled and sent on to the next stop on its national tour to be ready for its new host's reopening. While we are disappointed that it was not on public display as long as we had hoped for, we will be exploring ways to hopefully bring it back to Daytona Beach in the future so it can have more time on display at MOAS.

We are all very excited to welcome our friends back to our museums and ask that you please cooperate with our new signs and instructions from staff as we work through Phase 1 of reopening Florida's museums and cultural attractions. Please keep checking our website and social media pages for any announcement or updates that we make while we adapt to the new procedures we are adopting to allow you back into the Museum.

UPDATE | Monday, May 4, 2020

We are pleased to announce that the staff at MOAS are currently working on preparing our museums for reopening per the guidance in the latest order from Governor DeSantis. Once we know when this will be complete we will be announcing a reopening date for both MOAS and the Cici and Hyatt Brown Museum of Art.

Please note that when we reopen we will be required to ensure all of our rooms and galleries do not exceed 25% of their capacities, and at this time we are prohibited from reopening the Charles & Linda Williams Children’s Museum and the Lohman Planetarium. We are hopeful that future phases of the state’s reopening plans will allow both to reopen for our visitors to enjoy, but in the meantime, we will continue to offer educational and family presentations on our social media pages. The Tuscawilla Preserve will also be open to visitors after its recent repairs that have allowed the full length of the boardwalk to be available for use again.

Our staff are working hard to make the museums safe for both our staff and our visitors and ensuring that we can reopen while meeting the requirements for physical distancing between guests. We are lucky to have such spacious buildings with large galleries and public spaces that allow our visitors to stay a safe distance apart and minimize the need to touch door handles or railings. We are currently in discussion with the owners of the traveling exhibits that were on display when we had to close the buildings to the public back in March and will post information as soon as we can as to whether we are able to extend the run of any of these shows.

Thank you for all your support during these past few weeks and please keep checking back for more details on our reopening. We look forward to seeing you all back at the museum!

UPDATE | Monday, March 30, 2020

Based on the national guidelines announced recently, MOAS will remain closed through April 30, 2020, when we will again evaluate our timeline for possible re-opening. All programs and events scheduled for the month of April have been postponed and their new dates will be announced once we know when we will be able to open again. We appreciate your support during this time and hope you are enjoying the content we are providing on our social media channels!

UPDATE | Tuesday, March 17, 2020

For the safety of our visitors, staff, and volunteers and on the best advice on how to help combat the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, the Museum of Arts & Sciences, Cici and Hyatt Brown Museum of Art and the Lohman Planetarium will be temporarily closing to the public at 5 pm tonight, Tuesday 17^th March. At this point, we do not know for sure when we will reopen, but this will be continually assessed as the situation we are all dealing with develops. As of right now all of our programs in March have been canceled and any programs and events from April onwards should be regarded as preliminary until we are sure we will be reopen for them. Please keep checking our website or social media pages for regular updates and news on any postponements or cancellations, and the latest news on when we anticipate reopening.

While our buildings may be closed to the public, our staff will still be busy! We have been working on lots of ideas to keep you all engaged and entertained while the majority of us are hopefully staying home. Please keep an eye on our Facebook and Instagram pages for some fun, educational content that we will be adding to regularly, as well as the most up-to-date information about what is going on at the Museum. And please let us know if you have ideas on anything you would like to see us talk about or subjects and topics you would like us to cover.

We thank you all for your continued support and understanding of how important it is to look after our staff and volunteers right now. More than anything we look forward to welcoming you all back to MOAS the moment it is safe for us to do so.

Andrew Sandall
Executive Director

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Dear Friends,

As we all find ways to work together to minimize the impact of COVID-19, the Museum of Arts & Sciences would like to share what is being done to keep our visitors and staff safe while working to keep the Museum running as normally as possible.

Both the Museum of Arts & Sciences and the Cici and Hyatt Brown Museum of Art will remain open to visitors, including the Charles and Linda Williams Children’s Museum and the Lowell and Nancy Lohman Family Planetarium. We have asked our cleaning team to prioritize the most popular areas of the Museum to make sure they are sanitized regularly, although you may see that some of the exhibits in the Children’s Museum have been removed or closed temporarily for reasons of hygiene. We are also making sure that we have handwashing stations and hand sanitizer regularly stocked around the Museum for the use of our guests.

Because of concerns over larger group gatherings for prolonged periods of time, we are canceling all of our museum group programs through Tuesday, March 31, 2020. This will include:

o Friday, March 13: Movie Night in the Lohman Planetarium: Friday the 13th Part II
o Saturday, March 14: Pi Day Celebration
o Saturday, March 14: Second Saturday Laser Rock Concert
o Tuesday, March 17: St. Patrick’s Day Social
o Wednesday, March 18: Wednesday Yoga in the Gallery
o Thursday, March 19: Florida Vistas Book Club: Final Decade
o Friday, March 20: Night Sky Viewing Party – Spring Equinox
o Saturday, March 21: Afternoon with Florida History
o Wednesday, March 25: Lunch and Learn: Curator’s Choice
o Wednesday, March 25: Wednesday Yoga in the Gallery
o Friday, March 27: Porch Talk at Gamble Place: Florida During the Progressive Era 1890-1920
o Monday, March 30: MOAS After Hours
o Tuesday, April 14: MOAS Guild High Society Garden Party

Pre-paid admission holders for these events will be hearing from the MOAS Guest Relations team today to process any refunds. We will be assessing any future postponements or cancellations as the situation continues to develop, and for that reason will not be taking reservations for future programs that are provisionally on our calendar until we know for certain that they will be held.

We completely understand that many people may not want to come to visit the Museum right now, so we are working hard on some online projects so that you can still enjoy the Museum from your own home. Please visit our Facebook page (@MOASDaytona) for the latest news and details on any videos or live-streamed talks, tours, and demonstrations that we post to bring the Museum experience to you.

As I am sure you all understand, this situation is constantly developing, and circumstances continue to change rapidly. For all the latest information please refer to our Facebook page (@MOASDaytona), website (MOAS.org) or sign up for our online mailing list. We promise to bring you any news or updates as soon as we can and appreciate your patience while we all work through this.

Thank you once again for your support and patience, and we hope to see you back at the Museum soon!