Boredom Is Spreading the Coronavirus

This past spring, as art museums across the country were shuttering to help slow the spread of Covid-19, the Ryland Museum was opening up. The socially distanced museum launched in April in the hallway of a San Jose apartment building. Its first exhibition, open to a select audience — the building’s residents — was an adaptation of the artist Brian D. Collier’s work Very Small Objects and featured humdrum items such as a bit of lint, an old beam, and a piece of glass.

The co-curator was a grade-school-aged child named Erik whom the museum’s founder, his neighbor Amy Brown…