This is part of a roundtable on the COVID-19 pandemic and the work of history.
If you had told me on February 27, 2020—the day I packed my books, my cat, and my partner into my car and embarked on a cross-country move—that the world would soon be wracked by a deadly virus, I probably wouldn’t have changed my plans. It was a big move, after all. My partner was starting a new job, and I had a solid lead on one myself, which promised to be a serious step up from the museum gigs I’d worked since earning my MA last year.
On Friday, March 13, I signed an offer for that job—an interpretive manager position at a public-history site I love. Four days later, the site’s offices closed for two weeks and stayed so through May, delaying opening day for the season. Thankfully, my position was safe, but I had to wait to start work until museum leadership decided it was safe to be on site.
While I waited, I thought about how COVID-19 changes historic interpretation in practice. Good public history engages all five senses, but touch is particularly crucial to sites like mine that prioritize participatory visitor experiences. There’s a lot we simply cannot do once we reopen, in the interest of public health.
We can, however, adapt to the changing interests and concerns of the public we serve by finding relevant ways to invite them to participate in the stories we tell. I suspect certain themes within my museum’s pre-existing interpretive framework, like the threat of disease and early mortality or resilience in tight-knit communities, might strike visitors differently this year. If visitors want to talk about the pandemic, topics like these are useful entry points to draw them into the larger historical narratives we want to share. I hope they find thinking about the past helpful in making sense of the present; I know I have.
I recently started my new job after nearly six weeks at home. My first days flew by as I learned names and faces, interpretive material, and new procedures designed to mitigate the spread of the virus when the site opens to the public. This month we finally reopened, in a very different world.
It’s going to be a interesting summer.