The Field Museum's Pandemic Collection gathers stories and objects that reflect our cultural responses to the challenges and uncertainties of the time of COVID-19.
The Field Museum's
Pandemic Collection
...is an ongoing project to document the ways that COVID-19 is transforming our relationships to one another, to our homes and landscapes, to the ways we care for ourselves and others, to powers that are greater than us, and to new powers that pandemic living has let us access.
The Pandemic Collection is a work in progress. We have 100+ objects, including masks, artwork, and textiles, as well as audio, photographs, interviews, memes, and other multimedia archival material.
We welcome your reflections and contributions.
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COLLECTION THEMES
Explore the Pandemic Collection through five featured themes:
These themes reflect the shared experiences of diverse communities, from traditional healing/medicinal plant advocates in Peru, and mask-makers in the Philippines, to artists and essential workers in neighborhoods across the city of Chicago. A window on daily life in public and in private during the upheavals of the pandemic, these collections reveal the ways COVID has heightened social inequities and community resiliency alike.
