The great reopening – how Britain's galleries Covid-proofed themselves

From London to Llandudno to Dundee, museums are back in business. So is it now safe to view art - and how will they cope with the drastic drop in numbers?

There was a moment," says Andrew Nairne, when I was thinking, of course, we are like Nottingham Contemporary and the Hepworth Wakefield, places like that." The director of Kettle's Yard in Cambridge is guiding me around a gallery that's in rehearsals" for a socially distanced opening in August. Then I remembered that the others don't have a little cottage with tiny rooms and narrow corridors."

Today, the National Gallery in London is reopening after Covid-19 abruptly shut the doors of British museums in mid-March. But Kettle's Yard, like many others, is taking a slower, phased approach. The institution regularly hosts shows in its new, airy galleries - an exhibition from the artist Linder will be extended into the autumn - but at its heart is the home of its founder, curator and collector Jim Ede. This takes the form of a series of knocked-through cottages, their awkward-shaped rooms brimming with art and delicate objects. It is meant to be a warm, hospitable place where visitors are allowed the freedom to sit in armchairs, leaf through books left out on tables, and generally feel at home. All of which also makes it a social-distancing nightmare.