Museum records COVID-19 history as it’s happening
This story was produced
in partnership with the Pulitzer Center. For more stories about the
effect of COVID-19 on museums, please visit the Prairie State Museums
Project at PrairieStateMuseumsProject.org.
The
COVID-19 pandemic rocked the entire planet in 2020. The world has
changed forever. Undoubtedly, history will record the number of cases
and worldwide death toll, unemployment statistics, economic impacts and
stock market declines. But, what about the human stories – of loss,
triumph, hope, despair and the emotional impacts of living in this
challenging time? Who will record that history? Museums are uniquely
positioned to do so as repositories of human culture. Shortly after
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker directed residents to shelter-in-place,
the Illinois State Museum (ISM) launched an Illinois Stories COVID-19
Collecting Initiative to record history as it is happening, inviting the
people of Illinois to share their experiences living through the
pandemic. The Illinois State Museum, founded in 1877, has a long history
of telling the stories of Illinois. Now the ISM is capturing the
stories of Illinoisans during the pandemic, along with their poems,
writings, artwork, photographs and other material objects.
In
the short term, the initiative provides a forum for people to process
their feelings about what they are experiencing. In the long term, this
will preserve a record for posterity. The 2020 pandemic caused people to
look back on the 1918 influenza pandemic when there were an estimated
500 million infestations and 50-100 million deaths worldwide. The ISM is
ensuring that 100 years from now, future generations will be able to
understand the human toll in 2020.
To
date the ISM has received more than 300 responses from students,
retirees, young adults, artists, moms and others in Springfield and
throughout Illinois. The stories convey dreams put on hold, hopes
dashed, a renewed sense of gratitude and appreciation, anxiety about the
future, uncertainty for young adults embarking on their college years,
appreciation for frontline workers and hopefulness. With the museum
closed to the public, and staff working from home, stories are being
collected digitally and will be shared on social media. Once staff
return to work, the collected stories will be processed and preserved as
part of the Illinois Digital Archives. Staff will also solicit
donations of the physical objects in addition to the digital stories and
images.
The stories
are poignant. Ashley Carnes shares the incredible disappointment of
having to forgo planned in vitro fertilization treatment after four
years of trying to start a family. After investing thousands of dollars
for medications to begin a difficult process, Ashley and her husband’s
hopes were dashed nine days ahead of starting their treatment, uncertain
of a renewed start date for their dreams of having a child. F Evan
House is a Chatham sixth-grader who says this is the weirdest thing he’s
ever been through. He hopes this opens peoples’ eyes to just how
important our local heroes are who are helping everyone get through the
pandemic. Writing in chalk on his driveway, he thanked front-line
workers with the message, “Not all heroes wear capes.”
Obi
“Obisoulstar” Uwakwe is a Chicago musician, artist and photographer who
always enjoyed photographing the vibrancy of the city. Now, with a
heavy heart, he sees the city through a different lens. He painted,
“1,141,190 and up” while watching the news every day. His piece was
completed on April 5 when there were 1,141,190 reported COVID-19 cases
in the world. E Oaklee Thiele is a Springfield artist and disability
advocate. On April 19, Thiele’s entire family decided to cut each
other’s hair, standing outside in their backyard. Thiele watched as his
sister’s golden hair hit the bed of pine needles. Thiele believes she
elected to shave her long hair off entirely because it was something
that she could control. B Gary E. Kerr, a Springfield attorney,
submitted a poem, writing that the inspiration “came late at night after
having watched the president, day after day, saying things that were
not true and spreading false information about the COVID-19 pandemic to
make himself look good, while so many of our people were suffering and
dying.”
Zach Adams of
Springfield went to the reopen Illinois rally on May 16 specifically to
capture this moment in history. He was also at the June 1 protest in
Springfield, held in response to the Black Lives Matter movement
following the death of George Floyd. He submitted poignant photographs
of the peaceful and powerful protest, describing the presence of so many
races and so many people that came together for one cause. A D
Katherine Sanford of Roscoe Village shares her perspective of being a
stay-at-home mom, her husband working from home, while she tries to keep
her three children on track with remote learning. She took a photo of
her six-year-old son on a Zoom call with classmates, eight-year-old
daughter doing schoolwork and four-year-old son in the background. She
describes her photo as the idealized home school moment. However, behind
the camera her reality was feeling overwhelmed managing school from
home. C After struggling to wake up and go to work during her first
trimester of pregnancy, Lasaja Crawford of Springfield was grateful to
be paid while forced to stay home due to the pandemic. She soon
discovered that her stay-at-home mini-vacation was extremely challenging
with the demands of a two-year old. She’s living with her mother and
sister who are working from home and now realizes that as a result of
the coronavirus she has become more perceptive of her everyday needs and
more appreciative of her family and routines of daily life.
There
are many more stories to be told and recorded. Future generations need
to know how frontline health care workers selflessly cared for patients
unable to have family members with them in the hospital, how teachers
and parents were forced to shift to online learning with little
preparation, how parents struggled to work at home with infants and
toddlers demanding constant attention, how families buried loved ones
with no ability to hold traditional funerals, and how children and
grandchildren stood outside windows at nursing homes touching each other
through glass to express their love. The ISM’s goal with this project
is to show people that we are all in this together and connected. Share
your story at bit.ly/ShareyourILCOVID19story.
Karen
Ackerman Witter is a freelance writer and former associate director of
the Illinois State Museum. This is the first in a series of stories to
document the impact of COVID-19 on museums in Springfield as part of the
statewide Prairie State Museums Project funded by the Pulitzer Center.