MAMA director Bree Pickering said COVID-19 forced the MAMA team to entirely rethink their programming as international and interstate exhibitions were postponed.

"It's been challenging," she said.

"We had to re-program the entire museum in two months rather than spend two years coming up with programs."

Ms Pickering said with international travel off the cards, it was expected COVID would cause increase in regional tourism.

"Museums are one of the few cultural institutions that can be open now, so we're trying to leverage that," she said.

The pandemic also galvanised the institution's desire to support artists hurting in the pandemic.

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As a result MAMA has commissioned 20 artists, including five from our region, to develop work reflecting life in COVID for an exhibit beginning at the end of October.

"That way we're able to direct money straight to artists instead of spending it on loaning works," she said.

"I think the public will really connect with it...It's an incredible time we've all been through and experienced in different ways."

Last week, MAMA held their first live event since March, employing international art conservator Emily Mulvihill to bring the usually hidden process of restoring paintings into the light.

Like MAMA, Miss Mulvihill was forced to rethink her plans in light of COVID.

In January she returned to Australia from New York to visit her mum in Wagga and start her own business.

"I had work set up in Hong Kong and New York in May but the virus eliminated all that so I had to refocus and look at what was around me," she said.

Miss Mulvihill said the restoration of Norma Bull's work was the first she had undertaken in a gallery space and the response from visitors had been great.