In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • How Curators and Archivists Responded to the Pandemic
  • The Editors
Keywords

Pandemic, curator, archive, disaster

In our previous Public History sections, historians have critically reviewed several genres of the public history of technology. In this section, we invited public history practitioners to report firsthand on their experiences with online experiments in response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The cases highlight institutions' self-reflection about their mission, their resilience in the face of adversity, and their creativity in broadening their online audience.

We asked museum and archival professionals in France, India, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg to reflect on different institutional responses to COVID-19. What lessons have they learned in the pandemic environment that will continue to influence how they operate in the future? Are some of the transformations brought about by the crisis here to stay? What are the long-term implications for things like data justice—that is, how fairly are different people represented in the process of digitization? Do museum exhibits need to adapt as their target audience profile changes? How is digitization changing access to archives?

The initial wave of the COVID-19 pandemic made the physical spaces for scholarly work and public engagement in the history of technology suddenly unavailable. Two years later, the cultural sector faces even more unpredictable closures. The ongoing crisis has had severe impacts on the missions, operations, and finances of cultural institutions providing infrastructure to researchers, students, and the public at large: scheduled exhibitions were cancelled, research projects suspended, and visits postponed. Stripped of their core mission, some institutions tried to contribute by taking on new roles. Such a response is not entirely without precedent. During [End Page 458] the 1918 influenza pandemic, for example, some libraries became community care centers.1 Because of COVID-19, some museums have become vaccination or test centers.2

Due to the inaccessibility of their services, museums have embraced and invested in digital technology to support their core mission and extend their virtual reach. We have seen great efforts to render information accessible remotely and broaden the audience for their services. The pandemic forced institutions to think more broadly about who might access, benefit from, or contribute to their materials—recognizing in the process that online audiences might be different from those which previously visited in person.

First, in this section, we join a conversation with Amsterdam Museum curators Annemarie de Wildt and Errol Boon, who worked on the virtual crowd-curated Corona and the City exhibition. The interview format is one that we are bringing to Technology and Culture for the first time; it demonstrates the timely nature of this piece. The pandemic created a strong momentum for museums to try out new formats, to engage in different ways with their audience. It also created new partnerships: their public was invited to participate in the live documentation of everyday life during the pandemic. The experiment led to the co-creation of a space for cultural expression between the museum and its community. Their experiment also represents a time capsule for Amsterdam's life during the pandemic. Handing over the key, that is, passing on curatorial authority to the public, was essential to de Wildt's and Boon's experiences. This probably would not have happened without the pandemic.

Saurav Kumar Rai reflects on the situation at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi. Rai, a senior research assistant at this institute, reports on the kind of measures the museum implemented to maintain public services. He argues that through forced digitalization the pandemic has led to more access and democratization, possibly benefiting part-time historians who struggle to get to research seminars or archives. His observation invites us to ponder a question relevant to the broader community of historians of technology: does greater access mean more opportunities for scholars with fewer resources in underfunded institutions, countries, and communities around the world?

The third essay is by curator and national conservator Catherine Cuenca. It deals with an exhibition at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris that was designed as an in-person exhibition but was [End Page 459] quickly converted to a digital and a traveling format. Despite a...

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