Discovery Place lays off 75% of staff as coronavirus forces museums to stay closed

Discovery Place has temporarily laid off 75% of its full and part-time staff as it and other arts non-profits continue to reel from the economic effects of COVID-19.

The museum had 113 full-time and 59 part-time workers at its four museums: uptown’s Discovery Place Science, Discovery Place Nature in Myers Park, Discovery Place Kids-Huntersville and Discovery Place Kids-Rockingham. All four have been closed to visitors since March 14.

“To ensure that we will be here to educate families into the future, we made the painful choice to temporarily lay off 75% of our full-time and part-time staff,” Discovery Place President and CEO Catherine Wilson Horne said in a statement to the Observer.

Mecklenburg County’’s “stay-at-home” order took effect at 8 a.m. Thursday, and says all non-essential businesses and operations must temporarily stop operations until April 16. Area arts and culture groups were already hurting financially even before the coronavirus struck.

“We will be working with (employees) to provide as much assistance as possible,” Wilson Horne wrote. “We will continue to operate with a reduced staff that will focus on digital learning opportunities, the care of our animal residents, maintaining our facilities and caring for our community of supporters.

“Our hope is that when we emerge from this crisis, we will be able to ask all of these team members back to our organization as quickly as possible as we resume and rebuild our operations,” she wrote.

Wilson Horne announced Wednesday that the four museums museums will stay closed until further notice, calling the closure “one of the most difficult decisions we have ever had to make in the nearly 75 years we have been serving the Carolinas.”

This week, Discovery Place launched an online digital learning center, Stay-at-Home Science, with activities, videos and other resources for children and adults.

This story was originally published March 26, 2020 at 12:27 PM.