Category Archives: Collecting

The Pandemic Archive

The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanities, Arts and Public Health Practice Initiative (HAPPY) is building a multidisciplinary archive of the human experiences that comprise public health and community wellness in this moment in history.

They invite people to contribute to a publicly accessible archive documenting the experiences of living during the covid-19 pandemic, which can include: piece of writing, a scan or photo of a piece of artwork, a video, a list of the books you’re reading, the music you’re listening to, the places you’re finding hope, or just a list of the contents of your thoughts, days, time.

  • What do you want future generations to know about this time?
  • Where are you finding joy? Comfort? Hope
  • How are arts and music helping you get through your days?
  • What experiences are you having that you want to share with others?
  • How is your life changing during the pandemic?
  • What are you reading, listening to or watching?
  • What images describe your day dealing with covid-19?
  • How do you want the world to change as a result of this pandemic?
  • What are your hopes for the future?

Send us your answers, thoughts or stories, along with files and links to your artwork (poetry, drawings, paintings, video, photographs, plays, etc…) using the submission form.

We will develop a public website documenting your written responses and any links you provide to your artwork. We will also archive your submissions at the Yale Library for future generations to have a window into this moment. Please join us in preserving the human experiences of this time, for ourselves in the present and for those in the future.

Nos Cuidamos: We Take Care of Us

Nos Cuidamos is a collaboration between Cities for People, Not for Profit and the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project that has partnered with Bushwick Ayuda Mutua, MayDay Space, Mi Casa Resiste, Comida Pal Pueblo, and Riseboro Bushwick Grows Community Farm to help document experiences and systems of mutual aid that have emerged in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The interviews are available on the Cities for People, Not for Profit site, and can also be heard on the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project’s SoundCloud channel.

Portraits of an Epicenter: NYC in Lockdown

This book contains written reflections and photography by LaGuardia Community College (CUNY) students who documented their experiences during New York City’s first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Spring of 2020.  Eight students in the Gardiner-Shenker Student Scholars Program had begun the semester with plans to engage with the Wagner and LaGuardia Archives to focus on 1980s New York but had to improvise quickly and ended up setting their sights very much on the current moment. While they used traditional practices of archive development and curating to create their new project, they went beyond collecting physical artifacts and ephemera to include the vulnerable, emotional aspects of their unique experiences as well. The moving portrayal helped the creators to process the present and serves as a valuable document of an unprecedented period that will be archived at the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives and available for researchers and future students.

Pandemic Oral History Project (Archives of American Art)

To document the cascade of public health, social, and financial crises set in motion by COVID-19, the Archives of American Art created an oral history series that recorded responses to the global pandemic across the American art world. Conducted virtually, the Pandemic Oral History Project features eighty-five short-form interviews with a diverse group of artists, teachers, curators, and administrators. Averaging twenty-five minutes long, each interview provides a firsthand account of and urgent insights into the narrator’s triumphs and tragedies in the summer of 2020. With more than thirty hours of recorded video and audio, the series bears witness to an unprecedented era as it unfolded in real time. Interviews are available on the project’s website and YouTube channel, as well as a podcast series on ITunes.

Food and Covid-19 NYC

This curated collection of materials, photos, personal narratives, menus, media articles and more, began in the spring of 2020 as a NYU food studies graduate seminar class project, and evolved into a space capturing the food experiences of New Yorkers as they navigated the traumas of the COVID-19 pandemic through the end of 2020. Following the ebbs and flows of the pandemic’s intensity, the site captures the landscape of food during this period both topically (food insecurity, restaurants, shopping, and at home) and chronologically. The project also provides links to other collections and related articles.

Theatre 2020 Collection

The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin has created the Theatre 2020 Collection to document the impact of the Coronavirus crisis on the professional theatre community. The collection is seeking digital files from theatre professionals that could help future scholars and students understand this moment and how the theatre community responded. How has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted your career? Your organization or theatre company? How have your plans changed?

They will be collecting stories and files throughout the duration of the pandemic. Simply register as an individual or an organization, and they will send you a link to a Box.com folder with instructions on how to upload content. You can choose to submit whatever files you are comfortable sharing that help document your experience or the experience of your organization. The Ransom Center will review submissions to ensure they align with the scope of this collecting initiative, and the files will be preserved and made accessible for research at the Center.

New York Responds: The First Six Months

New York Responds: The First Six Months looks at the still-unfolding events of 2020 through the eyes of over 100 New Yorkers. This crowd-sourced exhibition presents objects, photographs, videos, and other artworks that document and interpret the COVID pandemic, the racial justice uprisings, and the responses of New Yorkers as they fought to cope, survive, and forge a better future. A jury of a dozen New Yorkers representing many walks of life helped to make the selection from among tens of thousands of submissions received from individual artists and from partner institutions.

Museum of the City of New York, December 18, 2020 through May 9, 2021

New York Responds: A Timeline of Year One

This timeline is part of a larger Museum of the City of New York exhibit, New York Responds. It was curated by Azra Dawood, the Museum’s Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Post-Doctoral Curatorial Fellow, with data visualization and web design by Sandy Guberti Ng. It is periodically illustrated by footage from Brooklyn-based artist and photojournalist Ian Reid.

Bioethical Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic Digital Collection

This collection consists of the work of Georgetown University faculty on bioethical issues arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. It includes articles (written for both the general public and the scholarly community) and recordings of lectures and webinars that have been presented in the wake of the pandemic. A number of Georgetown University affiliated institutions are represented in the collection, including the Kennedy Institute of Ethics; the Pellegrino Center for Clinical Bioethics; Global Engagement; the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs; and the Catholic Health Association. Works produced by Georgetown scholars that have been published by external organizations are also included in the collection.

Pandemic Perspectives: Stories Through Collections

The National Museum of American History’s Pandemic Perspectives series of online programs presents curators, historians, and topic specialists in engaging panel discussions offering perspectives on the current pandemic. Panelists virtually share historic objects and photographs as a springboard to a lively discussion of how to better understand the present. Audience questions are encouraged and will be addressed during the moderated dialogue. Information on upcoming programs as well as links to recording of previous sessions are available.