This Year Will End Eventually.

Document It
While You Can.
Museums are working overtime to collect artifacts and ephemera from the pandemic and
the racial justice movement, and they need your help.

By Lesley M. M. Blume
Published July 14, 2020Updated July 28, 2020

A few weeks ago, a nerdy joke went viral on Twitter: Future historians will be asked which
quarter of 2020 they specialize in.

As museum curators and archivists stare down one of the most daunting challenges of
their careers — telling the story of the pandemic; followed by severe economic collapse
and a nationwide social justice movement — they are imploring individuals across the
country to preserve personal materials for posterity, and for possible inclusion in museum
archives. It’s an all-hands-on-deck effort, they say.

“Our cultural seismology is being revealed,” said Anthea M. Hartig, the director of the
Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History of the events. Of these three earth-
shaking events, she said, “The confluence is unlike most anything we’ve seen.”

Museums, she said, are grappling “with the need to comprehend multiple pandemics at
once.”

We Are All Field Collectors

Last August, Dr. Erik Blutinger joined the staff of Mount Sinai Queens as an emergency
medicine physician. He knew that his first year after residency would be intense, but
nothing could have prepared him for the trial-by-fire that was Covid-19.

Aware that he was at the epicenter not only of a global pandemic, but of history, Dr.
Blutinger, 34, began to take iPhone videos of the scenes in his hospital, which was one of
New York City’s hardest hit during the early days of the crisis.

“Everyone is Covid positive in these hallways,” he told the camera in one April 9 recording
which has since been posted on the Mount Sinai YouTube channel, showing the
emergency room hallways filled with hissing oxygen tanks, and the surge tents set up
outside the building. “All you hear is oxygen. I’m seeing young patients, old patients,
people of all age ranges, who are just incredibly sick.”

He estimated that he has recorded over 50 video diaries in total.

In Louisville, Ky., during the protests and unrest that followed the killings of George Floyd
and Breonna Taylor, a Louisville resident, filmmaker named Milas Norris rushed to the
streets to shoot footage using a Sony camera and a drone.

“It was pretty chaotic,” said Mr. Norris, 24, describing police in riot gear, explosions, and
gas and pepper bullets. He said that at first he didn’t know what he would do with the
footage; he has since edited and posted some of it on his Instagram and Facebook
accounts. “I just knew that I had to document and see what exactly was happening on the
front lines.”
About 2,000 miles west, in Los Angeles, Nina Gregory, 45, an NPR
editor, had set up recording equipment on the front patio of her
Hollywood home. In March and April, she recorded the absence of city
noise. “The sound of birds was so loud it was pinging red on my levels,”
she said.
Soon the sounds of nature were replaced by the sounds of helicopters from the Los
Angeles Police Department hovering overhead, and the sounds of protesters and police
convoys moving through her neighborhood. She recorded all this for her personal records.

“It’s another form of diary,” she said.

Museums have indicated that these kinds of private recordings have critical value as
public historical materials. All of us, curators say, are field collectors now.

‘A National Reckoning’

In the spirit of preservation, Ms. Hartig from the National Museum of American History
— along with museum collectors across the country — have begun avid campaigns to
“collect the moment.”

“I do think it’s a national reckoning project,” she said. There are “a multitude of ways in
which we need to document and understand — and make history a service. This is one of
our highest callings.”

Some museums have assembled rapid response field collecting teams to identify and
secure storytelling objects and materials. Perhaps the most widely-publicized task force,
assembled by three Smithsonian museums working in a coalition, dispatched curators
to Lafayette Square in Washington to identify protest signs for eventual possible
collection.
The Ordinary is Extraordinary (Even Your Shopping Lists)

While some curators are loath to suggest a laundry list of items that we should be saving
— they say that they don’t want to manipulate the documentation of history, but take their
cues from the communities they document — many are imploring us to see historical
value in the everyday objects of right now.
“Whatever we’re taking to be ordinary within this abnormal moment can, in fact, serve as
an extraordinary artifact to our children’s children,” said Tyree Boyd-Pates, an associate
curator at the Autry Museum of the American West, which is asking the public to consider
submitting materials such as journal entries, selfies and even sign-of-the times social
media posts (say, a tweet about someone’s quest for toilet paper — screengrab those, he
said)
Document the Back Stories Too

Curators say that recording the personal stories behind photos, videos and objects are just
as crucial as the objects themselves — and the more personal, the better. Museums rely
on objects to elicit an emotional reaction from visitors, and that sort of personal
connection requires knowing the object’s back story.

“For us, really the artifact is just a metaphor, and behind that artifact are these voices,
and this humanity,” said Aaron Bryant, who curates photography and visual culture at the
Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, and who
is leading the Smithsonian’s ongoing collection response in Lafayette Square.

Curatorial teams from many museums are offering to interview donors about their
materials and experiences, and encourage donors to include detailed descriptions and
back stories when submitting objects and records for consideration. Many are also
collecting oral histories of the moment.

Keep Documenting

Curators recognize that their story-of-2020 collecting will continue for years; we are in
the midst of ongoing events. They are asking us to continue to document the subsequent
chapters — and to be as posterity-minded as one can be when it comes to ephemera.

“We don’t know what the puzzle looks like yet,” said Ms. Hartig of the National Museum
of American History. “Yet we know that each of these pieces might be an important one.”

Some museums are exhibiting submitted and accepted items right away on websites or
on social media; others are planning virtual and physical exhibits for as early as this
autumn. The Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, for example, is
collecting masks and oral history testimonies from Native American communities and is
considering the creation of a “rapid response gallery,” said the museum’s vice president
and chief curator Elisa G. Phelps.

“If art is being sparked by something very timely, we want to have a place where we can
showcase works and photos,” she said, adding that this process differed from “the
elaborate, formal exhibit development process.”

Some donors, however, may not be among those to view their materials once they become
part of institutionalized history — at least not right away. Even though Dr. Blutinger said
that he sees the historical value of his emergency room video diaries, he has yet to revisit
the peak-crisis videos himself.

“I’m almost scared to look back at them,” he said. “I’m worried that they’ll reignite a set
of emotions that I’ve managed to tuck away. I’m sure one day I’ll look back and perhaps
open up one or two clips, but I have never watched any of them all the way through.”