March 27, 2021
Please Touch Museum/Facebook
The Please Touch Museum opened after a yearlong closure caused by the pandemic.
The Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia is opening its doors this April for the first time since the start of the pandemic.
Starting April 22, people can visit the hands-on museum, though paying members can get in early on April 8.
Museum officials said they consulted with health experts and "reimagined [the] exhibit experience to provide a welcoming, clean, and low-touch Museum experience for all."
Visitors can reserve a spot in one of two daily time slots: a morning session from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. and an afternoon session from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. The museum is open Thursday through Sunday.
The Please Touch Museum cut its staff by 75% over the summer, WHYY reported. The staff was brought back partially for the reopen, and CEO Trish Wellenbach said she plans to slowly expand the hours of operation and take on more employees.
This opening follows several others in the city. The Eastern State Penitentiary opened March 12 and Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell Center opened in January.
Most museums were able to open last summer before closing last November as case numbers rose. But the Please Touch Museum stayed shut, as keeping its hands-on exhibits sanitized so COVID-19 didn't spread was a challenge.
Curators spent more than four years working on a new exhibit that was set to open April 6, 2020, but the pandemic pushed back its opening date by more than a year. The Centennial Innovations exhibit promotes creative problem solving, invention and features 19 century inventions like the typewriter, telephone and bicycle.
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