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Covid-19 collection: Museums document pandemic for future generations

By Marta Pérez-Cejuela

London, May 20 (efe-epa).- British curators are already preparing for the day when the history of the coronavirus is documented in museums.

Among the future items are yeast, hand sanitizer and masks, objects that are beginning to swell collections amassed in unprecedented conditions.

London’s Victoria and Albert Museum was one of the first to launch such a programme.

Senior curator Brendam Cormier told Efe: “This notion of capturing as it goes is really new, it’s really only the last 10 years.

“And it is coming to the fore now museums are checking this as a priority. I feel that is a responsibility.”

Cormier launched the blog Objects of the Pandemic at the beginning of March inviting artists and museum workers to analyze the reason for new meanings that yeast packets hold or how Google satellites have become our only means of escape.

“It was meant as a kind of research into the project, to kind of understand what’s happening,” he added.

“We publish this so that people can read it, but also to help us understand what we might collect physically.”

The museum launched its first open appeal last week when it asked for people to send in handmade posters.

It received hundreds of examples via email within five days, including children’s drawings to encourage good hygiene to closure notices hanging on storefronts.

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