Creating memory of COVID-19: The actions of museums and archives in Spain

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic is an historic event that has affected the entire world, but since it has been experienced differently in each country, locality and family, it will also be remembered in different ways. This article provides an analysis of the ways in which museums and archives have sought to document the pandemic in Spain to create memory discourses for the future. This includes an account of the subjects that have been documented, the exhibitions held, the online and in situ initiatives undertaken, and the nature of physical and virtual items collected. The museums and archival institutions have collected many documents, images and physical objects that will play an important role in the creation of memories about COVID-19 in the future.

Keywords

collecting the present COVID-19 memory institutions memory of COVID-19 museums

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic is an historic event that has affected the entire world, but since it has been experienced differently in each country, locality and family, it will also be remembered in different ways. Memory narratives are neither unbiased nor spontaneous, but rather closely linked to legitimising the socio-political interests and reinforcing the collective identity of those who reproduce them (Sevillano, 2003). Images of the past are used to legitimise a certain social order and a shared memory (Connerton, 1989), and the role of museums and other memory institutions is central when it comes to constructing these images. For this reason, it seems pertinent to analyse the role of these institutions in the formation of memories of COVID-19. How will the multiplicity of global experiences be integrated with national, local, family and individual memories in memory discourses? What role will memory institutions – museums, archives and libraries – play in the way we remember the experience of everyday life during the pandemic? And how will this memory be represented in museums?

Memories of catastrophes, pandemics and conflicts involve numerous conflicting narratives (Gray et al., 2004; Tansman, 2003), but there is an extensive literature (Wilson, 2013) that gives one an idea of how memory of COVID-19 may turn out to be structured: the processes involved in shaping the collective memory of the pandemic are likely to be very similar to those involved in recording other traumatic events. These include the combination of individual and collective memories (Olick and Robbins, 1998), narratives on the various phases of trauma, grief and memory (Lira, 2010) and the role of memory-producing institutions (Robinson, 2012).

As Erll (2020) has pointed out, we do not yet know for how long and how deeply the global memory of the pandemic will extend into the future, how it will vary in different parts of the world and how social memories will be integrated with those of individuals. According to Erll, this will depend on the interplay of memory with other experiences, with memories and events that may occur in the near future, and above all, on the manner in which the pandemic is overcome. What can be said for certain is that memory after the coronavirus will be reproduced in very different ways and there will be a juxtaposition of local, family, generational and possibly also transnational memories. Analyses of the memory of this period will need to differentiate between the different kinds of memory and the effects on mentalities, emotions, affects and behaviours. As Simko (2021) has argued, this diversity generates challenges for the way in which social meanings are created and events narrated.

Although collective memories of the pandemic will be constructed in a similar way to memories of other traumatic events, we believe nevertheless that memory of the COVID-19 pandemic will reflect a number of specific characteristics:

A global memory. COVID-19 is a historic event that has been experienced simultaneously around the world and at very different levels. As Barua (2020) points out, the pandemic has affected a large number of global interrelationships, creating major difficulties in almost every aspect of social, economic and political life, to the extent that it can be considered one of the most transformative events in decades, perhaps the greatest economic and social shock the world has experienced in the last decades. Other epidemics, while cutting millions of lives short, took several years to spread around the world, but COVID-19 reached most of the world’s countries suddenly and almost at the same time. Moreover, news and information spread rapidly, so that, knowledge of what was happening extended instantly around the world. Numerous slogans, expressions and attitudes to the pandemic moved rapidly from one country to another, along with fake news, rituals and certain forms of behaviour (Lima et al., 2020).

A memory recorded instantly online. As with other contemporary events, the events of the pandemic have been instantly recorded by social media and the press. Researchers of the future will encounter millions of news stories, images, blogs and objects that reveal experiences of a collective and personal nature. Determining which of these objects or records deserve to be part of museum collections or archives will be a huge challenge for institutions, which even before now have not found it easy to decide which objects to select for collections on contemporary life (Roigé and Canals, 2021).

An altered experience of everyday life. The pandemic has affected numerous forms of social behaviour (Sélim, 2020), including several academic dynamics (Shelley-Egan, 2020), forms of domestic life, digital communication (Myles et al., 2021), the way we celebrate festivals and intangible heritage (Roigé et al., 2021b) and personal relationships. During COVID-19, everyday life has been altered: initially, we were forced to stay at home, which became both a refuge and a kind of prison (Moretti and Matturo, 2021), and then, we were faced with a ‘new normality’, characterised by ‘new’ social elements and habits. This everyday life has generated new memory narratives and new objects (masks, disinfectants, posters, protective plastics, etc.) that are incorporated within memory discourses.

Psychological effects that will have an effect on memory. Memory is influenced particularly negative states of mind. As Zhang et al. (2021) point out, the effect of negative states of mind on memory is not necessarily manifested in the quantity of memory (how much information is remembered), but rather in the quality of memory (what kind of information is remembered). Of the multiplicity of experiences, which will be most clearly remembered?

A more ‘collaborative’ memory. The enormous importance of social networks during this period is likely to lead to the creation of more collaborative memories, with a reduction in the unidirectional role of the conventional media and of the memory institutions themselves.

A plurality of memories. As Erll (2020) points out, the pandemic, at least in countries where there has been lockdown, will define a generation, even if it has affected us in different ways: there will be the memories of children who could not go to school and had to stay at home; those of young people unable to meet up with friends; the memories of the elderly; and memories that vary according to gender. It is also likely that the experience of memory will represent a turning point: just as we speak of ‘before and after the war’ or ‘before and after the fall of the Berlin wall’, we will speak of ‘before and after COVID-19’. However, in spite of having been one event experienced by millions of people, it will be expressed in a plurality of memories, even conflicting ones. As in all countries, during the course of the pandemic, political debates have been intense in Spain, with antagonistic collective identities and counterfactual narratives competing for entry into collective memory. The process of narrativisation in itself is inevitable, but there have been accusations aimed at certain social groups – especially young people – over their behaviour. Health measures have been disputed, and there have been protests from those who oppose government measures, such as requirements for health passes, masks and vaccinations. Processes of memory around COVID-19 will involve several points of view: (1) personal and family memory, based on the events experienced in each family and in each street; (2) memory compiled from social networks and official communications; and (3) media and public memory.

As Samaroudi et al. (2020) point out, memory institutions (such as museums or archives) play a key role in the formulation of collective discourses, especially in times of uncertainty. This role becomes relevant in the face of the ‘acceleration of history’ (Nora, 1997); humanity faces an overabundance of events and information at an increasingly accelerated rate and a ‘culture of amnesia’ (Huyssen, 1995), which calls on these institutions to collect artefacts from the present as tangible proof of their existence: ‘To be sure of the past, we need its actual traces’ (Lowenthal, 2015: 392). Nevertheless, as memory is ultimately selective, the narratives that these institutions document, preserve and exhibit will shape the memories of future generations.

As noted in a UNESCO (2020a) report, memory institutions have played a decisive role in public information about COVID-19 because of their credibility and the fact that they took action to collect memories of lockdown from the outset. A wide variety of initiatives (Agostino et al., 2021) have been undertaken to document memory of life during the lockdown, both physically and online. These measures will not only be decisive for the creating future memory discourses; they will also cause us to reflect on fundamental aspects of memory policy. These include the policies and measures that have been adopted to collect testimonies, the role of archived objects in the narrative about the period (Charlebois and Leclerc, 2015), the way in which digital memory may be combined with that of physical objects (Burke et al., 2020; Roigé et al., 2021a), collaborative forms of memory construction in museums (Fuks et al, 2012) and the interrelation of virtual memory with psychological memory (Kohn, 2021).

Another characteristic of this distinctive memory-making process is that, from day 1 of the pandemic, museums and archives started to collect ‘testimonies’ as events unfolded. Many museums around the world have now created physical or virtual archives that include objects, images, videos and audios with testimonies or narratives about people’s daily lives. The documenting of historical events as they happen is not new in the history of museums and has already played a prominent role in events, such as the 9/11 attacks in New York in 2001 (Frisbee, 2012), in the collection of testimonies and documents following the 2004 Madrid bombings (Sánchez-Carretero, 2011), in other terrorist attacks (Navajas, 2020) and in the documentation of the Black Lives Matter movement (Salahu-Din, 2019). But never before has the collection of objects and testimonies been carried out on such a global scale and for so long a period of time. As early as March 2020, initiatives calling on citizens to share their experience of the global social and health crisis began to appear on the websites and social networks of museums all over the world. Moreover, this was done so as a matter of urgency and in a challenging context, given that more than 90% of the world’s museums had been forced to close their doors (UNESCO, 2020b). There were numerous reasons for these measures, ranging from the desire to maintain contact with audiences, the wish to document COVID-19 memory for the future and the intention to create physical or virtual exhibitions. Although some approaches were very specific and planned, most of the museums implemented ‘emergency collections’ that discriminated little in terms of the type and content of material that could be donated nor the objectives for which it would be used, leaving its purpose, use and classification for future reflection (Canals and Roigé, 2021).

Museums and archives throughout the world have collected physical objects related to the pandemic (vials of the first vaccine in each country, masks, medical items, public posters, etc.), objects that have generally symbolised the fight against COVID-19. But above all, they have collected a large number of virtual documents (photographs, videos, accounts of everyday experiences, stories of individuals or groups who carried out inspiring or heroic actions, etc.). Museums and archives around the world have launched COVID-19 emergency documentation campaigns, not only to acquire the documents themselves, but above all, out of a concern to get involved and communicate with their public. Despite the differences with which the various initiatives have been carried out in different countries and types of museums, most of the institutions have adopted a participatory approach to collect physical and digital collections on the period. Although studies already exist for some countries (Agostino et al., 2021; Burke et al., 2020; Hoffman, 2020; King et al., 2021; Kist, 2020; UNESCO, 2020a) it is still too early to determine how this period will affect the future of museums.

As a result, a huge number of documents, images, reports and objects related to the pandemic are now available. In the coming years, historians and museologists will have to ask themselves how they are going to use these materials and how they will contribute to the formation of narratives, but for the time being, there are still numerous questions about how this memory will be created. This article provides an analysis of the ways in which museums and archives have sought to document the pandemic in Spain to create memory discourses for the future. This includes an account of the subjects that have been documented, the exhibitions held, the online and in situ initiatives undertaken, and the nature of physical and virtual items collected. The aim is to look at the emergency reactions of the museums and, at the same time, to reflect on the criteria involved in contemporary collection formation, and to understand how these will influence the formation of future memories. As an initial hypothesis, we understand that the museums and archives have compiled a corpus of documentation and objects that will play a very important role in the formation of the memory of the pandemic, given the role of these institutions in determining the narratives of memory. The creation of collections on a yet unfinished process is of extraordinary interest not only in terms of how museums have reacted to COVID-19, but also because it suggests numerous questions about how museums document the present and their role in shaping memory (Battesti, 2012).

Adopting a qualitative approach to compile the information, the authors carried out a search for museums’ initiatives. The online ethnography included the websites and social networks of museums in Spain, and news about these initiatives in the media. Some 30 examples are analysed in this text (Table 1), but to analyse them in greater depth, we will focus on 12 cases. The use of digital content in research entails limitations and raises methodological debates, such as issues over the best way to discover and analyse the data, ethical questions about the use of information and the temporary nature of online data (Alivizatou, 2019). However, despite these drawbacks, online observation has been essential during the pandemic, as there have been a very large number of digital initiatives that offer us a wealth of information about people’s experience of this period (Higgins et al., 2020) and because museums’ communication strategy during lockdown was generally online. The measures studied were generally adopted by museums during lockdown and closure of the museums and archives (between March and May 2020) and then in the period up until the end of 2020. The physical exhibitions described were visited and observed by the authors of this study.

Table 1.

Types of documentation collected, and exhibitions held on the pandemic by museums and archives in Spain in 2020 (with examples).

Types of initiative	Examples	Institution
1. Collecting and documenting
Collection of physical objects	#ArxivemlaCOVID19	Catalan Association of Archives
Collection of physical objects	‘Memories of a pandemic’	Catalan Ethnological & History Museums network
Collection of virtual objects	#ArxivemlaCOVID19	Catalan Association of Archives
	‘Memories of a pandemic’	Catalan Ethnological & History Museums network and others
	‘Valencians and the coronavirus’	Valencian Museum of Ethnology
Sharing of experiences, images, stories and opinions	‘The museum from my window’	Helga de Alvear Museum (Extremadura)
	‘Microhistories from lockdown’	Madrid Museum of History
	‘Embracing uncertainty. Scaring away evil’	Reina Sofía Museum Art Centre (Madrid)
Collection of stories and testimonies	‘Testimonies of a pandemic’	Castile and Leon Museum of Ethnology
	‘Testimonies of a pandemic’	San Telmo Museum (Basque Country)
	‘Archive of lockdown ethnographies’	Museum of the Galician People
	‘Narrar para no olvidar’	Museum University of Navarra
Video and photographic documents	‘Covid Archive’	University of Alcala de Henares (Madrid)
Video and photographic documents	‘Time to heal. Portraits of healthcare in the battle against Covid-19’	Leica Gallery (Madrid)
2a. Physical exhibitions
Photographic exhibitions on the impact on the healthcare system	‘Covid-19. A look within exhibition’	Vizcaya Institute of Physicians (Basque Country)
	‘Heroes in protective clothing’	Quiron Hospital (Cordoba)
	‘Petals in the Wind’	University Hospital (Burgos)
	‘Applause at 8 o’clock in the evening’	Albacete Municipal Museum
	‘The unexpected city’	Contemporary Art Museum Castile and León
	‘Madrid 2020: A unlikely city’	Madrid Museum of History
Photographic exhibitions on the impact on society	‘COVID-19: Open your eyes’	Caritas Barcelona&Diocesan Museum of Barcelona
Exhibitions on design	‘Emergency. Designs to combat COVID-19’	Barcelona Design Museum
Exhibitions on design	‘The creative response’	Igualada Atheneum (Catalonia)
2b. Virtual exhibitions
Collaborative exhibitions	‘Mural’	National Museum of Anthropology (Madrid)
Collaborative exhibitions	‘With three wounds I’	Reina Sofía National Museum Art Centre (Madrid)
Exhibitions of professional photographs	‘Covid Art Museum’	Covid Art Museum
Presentation of photographs of household items as if they were in a museum	#elmuseoencasa	Museum of Asturian People
	‘Ethnology of lockdown’	Ecomuseum of the Valls d’Àneu (Catalonia)
	Photo competition	Basque Museum

Source: Authors’ compilation.

Some of these initiatives were carried out by a variety of institutions.

Memory institutions’ initiative entailed, above all, collecting testimonies, images and objects, although there were differences in their consistency, duration, objectives and means of dissemination. Although there may be various criteria for classifying the initiatives (types of materials collected, representativeness and level of memory), we have chosen to organise the data according to the two main objectives of the measures: (1) documenting, creating and sharing contemporary collections about the pandemic and (2) representing the pandemic through physical or virtual exhibitions. Although many initiatives pursued both objectives, we decided on the categories in the next two sections on the basis of the objectives stated by the institutions as well as the results observed more than a year after the outbreak of the pandemic and the implementation of the measures.

Collecting and documenting memories of the pandemic

As in most countries around the world, museums and archives in Spain were forced to close their doors as a result of the measures put in place to control the pandemic.¹ They reacted with a rapid digital response to maintain links with their public. But in addition, these institutions saw an opportunity to document the pandemic and lockdown and so to create a contemporary collection about the event. In our opinion, this collection of materials demonstrates three interesting aspects relating to the way memory is constructed. First, citizens were invited to make specific contributions, and this enabled the construction of an intersubjective account of the memory of the pandemic. This collection of testimonies and personal accounts is of enormous value for the future and will enable citizens to understand a side of the pandemic not reflected in official documents. Second, in addition to stories, museums requested personal objects related to the pandemic, objects that in themselves do not have a ‘heritage’ value in a traditional sense, but are ‘memory-objects’ (Battesti, 2012), repositories of a subjective memory of the pandemic. Third, everything that has happened during this period has been recorded almost constantly and immediately – both publicly and privately – on social networks and other online areas. This has generated a vast amount of information and many stories that will play an important role in the formation of memory narratives.

In Spain, it has generally been history and anthropology museums and historical archives that have implemented these measures, by means of open calls on their websites and social networks. We have observed four kinds of initiative (Table 1).

Collection of physical objects. A highly diverse range of objects related to everyday practice (Myles et al., 2021) was collected, including face masks, letters, banners, posters, medical items, letters, vials containing the first vaccines, and new products created by industry and so on. These items raise interesting questions about their nature, meaning and later use. The initiative of many museums, especially local ones, has led to the creation of collections that will form the basis for future exhibitions. For example, 20 museums belonging to the Catalan Ethnological and History Museums network conducted a campaign entitled ‘Memories of a Pandemic’ (Image 1), whose aim was to ‘interpret the impact of the pandemic in Catalonia from a health, social, economic and cultural point of view and collect the heritage that future generations will be able to link to the historical period in which we live’.² The aim of the museums was not only to collect objects, but also to put them into context with other examples of the memory of lockdown.

Collection of virtual items. Archives throughout Spain immediately invited the public – through the media and social networks – to contribute photographs, videos, audio recordings and any other kind of document. Generally, they launched requests for as much documentation as possible. The project entitled ‘#DocumentingCOVID19’ (Catalan Association of Archives), for example, aimed to ‘create the memory of the future, so that it is not only the official version that remains’, since ‘there are many kinds of lockdown and social media cannot guarantee that everything we record and write will be saved’.³ Many archives (municipal, association, museum and university) took part in this initiative.

Documentation of the pandemic by means of photographs and videos. In some cases, photojournalists have been requested to contribute photographs, videos and reports. One example is the Covid Archive, an online, non-profit initiative of the University of Alcala de Henares promoted by a group of Spanish non-profit photojournalists. The project, which includes 8500 photographs and 38 videos taken by 385 photographers, seeks to prioritise the quality of each photograph and the information needed to document the crisis, and to represent all the territories in the country. The aim of the archive is to provide

a documentary record and create a collective memory that will last over time and also serve as a source of research and object of study, not only to prevent or anticipate similar events, but also to understand the effect that it will have on current and future generations.⁴

It describes the archive as a ‘time capsule’ and it includes a wide range of scenes; domestic activities, images of hospital patients, empty streets and city squares, cancelled festivals, neighbours’ conversations on balconies, closed shops and even acts of protest against lockdown. What is interesting about these approaches is the value of photography in establishing collective memory, since the exhibition includes things that many people were unable to see at the time due to the restrictions, but which now have an ‘after-image’ value, that is, a power to shape collective narratives in moments of social trauma (Nair, 2011). In an era that is defined by an almost pathological need to record everything in images, the collection of images from the COVID-19 period raises questions about the contradictions inherent in creating a future memory based on ephemeral electronic images (Seligmann-Silva, 2009). As in other traumatic memory processes, photography has played a prominent role and has a psychological impact, so that, prolonged viewing of images may have a cathartic effect. These visual memory archives created by museums will undoubtedly contribute to establishing a meta-narrative on the events in Spain, although they also raise certain questions: how will they be complemented by individual memories and the multitude of images obtained by individuals and disseminated by social networks? Will the images of individuals be forgotten and those preserved in institutional archives have greater force?

Collection of stories and testimonies. From the very beginning of the pandemic, museums and archives requested testimonies from local inhabitants for their archives. This enabled them to draw on a range of different memories (Erll, 2020) of the period and to provide a local account of a global pandemic (Barua, 2020). One example is the initiative ‘Testimonies of a pandemic. Anthropology of the present’ (Image 2), which invited testimonies in audio or video format from the inhabitants of the region of Castile and León. Although the call was general, the museum used a series of questions on everyday life in the pandemic and people’s specific experiences and feelings to guide responses. Aware of its role as a memory institution, the museum explained that the aim of the initiative was to employ people’s subjective experience to provide an understanding of the moment in the future: ‘These resources may be analysed by researchers, groups, and people who are interested in studying this period on the basis of the testimonies provided’.⁵ It should also be noted that the initiative was not only aimed at adults, but also at young people. This is significant, as most initiatives have not focused on children’s experience of the pandemic, while children in Spain were not only not able to go to school, but also experienced one of the strictest lockdowns in the world and were forbidden to leave their homes for almost 3 months. The initiative to collect personal accounts and testimonies was followed by other museums (Table 1). Likewise, the Museum of the Galician People⁶ created an ‘Archive of lockdown ethnographies’ that, as in the previous case, invited the public to submit ‘autoethnographies’, on defined themes and associated questions. This questionnaire asked for details of how the news of the lockdown had been received, people’s first impressions, concerns and reactions (shopping, phone calls and family organisation), how teleworking was handled, family management (childcare, habits, alternation of work and family activity), ways of obtaining information about the pandemic, perception of the pandemic crisis and sense of risk (COVID-19 illness, illness of family members and loss of friends or relatives), and reflections on the effects of the lockdown and future consequences. This documentation, which could be submitted in video format, is interesting in that it is about immediate perceptions during lockdown. Museums were able to compile memory narratives for future use and to emphasise the value of this memory to ‘narrate so as not to forget’, which considered that these narratives had a ‘healing’ value for the people who wrote them. It should be noted that one of the roles frequently assumed by museums in memory processes is to provide spaces for emotional expression in times, such as the pandemic, a period that has involved tough challenges for citizens as well as a psychological and social impact (Zhang et al, 2021).

Collection of reflections on lockdown. For the purpose of debate, some museums asked for contributions directly related to life under lockdown. While most of these initiatives focused on life under lockdown, some went further. One such initiative was ‘Embracing uncertainty. Scaring away evil’ (Reina Sofía Museum Art Centre, Madrid), which sought to prompt reflection on ways in which we understand health, healing and care in the current context of the COVID-19 crisis. The initiative, which invited contributors to share experiences, emotions and knowledge, was in line with previous museum initiatives on the memory of AIDS and other contemporary epidemics. The initiative aimed to activate a process of identifying, collecting and analysing the aesthetic practices, representations, collective experiences and performative tactics involved in the politics of HIV/AIDS, and now COVID-19. The undertaking addressed questions, such as ‘How do we manage the chain of health/healing/caring for people and Otherness?’ How do we understand the ‘fear of contact’ that produces real and subjective barriers with the Other, social fragmentation and the construction of opposing worlds? How do we make use of the new language created during the pandemic and how might these ways of naming, pointing out and controlling reality be subverted?⁷

As we have seen, museums and archives have used social media intensively during the pandemic, with museums giving much more prominence to social media than to web environments (Pijbes, 2015). Social networks have been used for two purposes. On one hand, they have served to collect, in a more or less ordered manner, physical and virtual objects, and to create collections related to the pandemic. These actions lie within the conventional approaches of these organisations: compiling, inventorying, selecting and exhibiting collections. But in addition, museums have also used the networks as a space for dissemination, divulgation, participation and social debate. Social media are not new to museums and memory institutions, but as Ebbrecht-Hartman (2020) points out, the manner of conceiving memory has been profoundly transformed during the COVID-19 period. In fact, digitalisation had already changed existing concepts of memory and the mediation of the past (Hoskins, 2017), offering new opportunities and challenges by making video testimonies accessible online and available to audiences not physically present (Pinchevski, 2019). Digital tools are highly effective and creative not only for showcasing collections and institutional initiatives, but also for enabling interaction with the public and the exchange of ideas, emotions, experiences and objects, generating a relationship that is more extensive than possible within the four walls of a museum or even in online digital archives. In the museums and collections analysed in Spain, we can see how social networks have gained enormous weight, both for the institutions and the people who access them during the pandemic; they put a smile on the human face of the ‘boring’ and closed-in world of institutions (Richardson, 2020).

Image 1.

Poster from the campaign to collect objects #MemoriesPandemic. Catalan Ethnological & History Museums network (screenshot).

Image 2.

Banner from the campaign to collect audio and video testimonies. Castile and Leon Museum of Ethnology (screenshot).

Social networks therefore offer an extremely wide range of different spaces in which a person can discover, experience, feel emotion and exchange experiences with people around the world. As a result of the need to connect with physically absent audiences, museums have discovered an interactive world that complements the real one and blurs the lines between reality and the virtual. This kind of social interaction has enabled museums to discover a new way of managing the representation of collective memory. Some early studies on the use of social networks by museums during the pandemic found that COVID-19 has acted as a kind of catalyst and that Spanish museums modified their communication and promotion strategies on social networks during and after the confinement (García et al., 2021; Mas et al., 2021). Intense activity on social networks will undoubtedly contribute to the nature of COVID-19 collective memory, although doubts may arise as to how this will be done: How will future researchers into the collective memory of the pandemic take into account this enormous mass of information, created spontaneously and often just for fun? This is not only a methodological challenge, but it also implies a conception of memory that is not unidirectional, but much more collaborative and changeable.

Exhibiting memories of the pandemic

Museums are the main memory institutions that specialise in preserving, representing and disseminating memory, and they do so principally by means of exhibitions. Given the unprecedented nature of the global social and health crisis, many museums reorganised their exhibition programmes to incorporate certain aspects of the pandemic into exhibitions online or in situ (once on-site work had been resumed). Exhibitions can be defined as representational systems (Lidchi, 1997) in which memories are conveyed by means of a narrative composed of various resources (texts, images, objects and audio-visual elements).

Physical exhibitions were resumed rapidly. As in other countries, museums in Spain were finally able to open their doors in June 2020. We noted three kinds of exhibition:

Photographic exhibitions on the health impact of the pandemic, in the museums themselves or in hospitals. Most were exhibitions of photographs and there was a clear focus on recognising the work of healthcare professionals (Table 1). These exhibitions were a tribute to the medical personnel and their heroism at the most difficult stages of the pandemic. While most of the exhibitions were the work of professional photographers, others were of a more collaborative nature, such as ‘Applause at 8 o’clock in the evening’, a collection of local residents’ photographs of the outbreaks of applause on people’s balconies.

Photographic exhibitions on life in the cities during lockdown. Given their immediacy and visual power, images have undoubtedly played a central role in the representation of memories of the pandemic. Moreover, unlike in previous crises, people today are both able to take photographs on their own mobile phones and instantly disseminate them to the world through social networks. However, people were confined to their homes without access to public space and could only take images within their homes, so that, pictures of what was happening outside were provided by photographers and key workers, who focused on areas affected by the pandemic: hospitals, cemeteries and the empty streets of cities and towns. These included images of the deserted city and the ‘new social interactions, the concept of limit, the essential professional activities, the triumph of nature over the urban, the dichotomy between inside and outside and between light and shadow’⁸ documenting experiences of everyday life (Myles et al., 2021).

Exhibits on the social impact of the pandemic. It is also worth highlighting the exhibition called ‘COVID-19: Open your eyes’ and staged by Caritas Barcelona (a Catholic social work institution) in collaboration with the Diocesan Museum of Barcelona. The display of 40 images by photojournalists seeks to demonstrate the solidarity of citizens and the anguish, suffering and despair of this period. In addition to the photographs, the exhibition includes a series of videos, a selection of objects linked to the pandemic and, the most prominent element, a recreation of a 10 m² room, similar to those occupied by many of Caritas service users, highlighting the fact that lockdown was not the same for all the social classes (Image 3).

Exhibitions of objects related to the pandemic. Museums have always focused on objects and when exhibited they become artefacts of memory and are endowed with a different meaning: their value resides in the memories that accompany them, rather than their exceptional nature or the fact they represent a certain period. However, obtaining objects relating to the pandemic was complicated by several factors: a lack of protocols for collecting objects that would ensure the health of museum workers, the closure of museums, the confinement of citizens and ethical issues over requesting objects that might be of prime necessity. Despite these drawbacks, several museums in Spain staged exhibitions of objects. The Barcelona Design Museum put on an exhibition entitled ‘Emergency. Designs to combat COVID-19’ (Image 4) that sought to explain how design had contributed to a rapid response to COVID-19. One of its main subjects was the design of the face mask and the contributions of companies and designers to the improvement of this and other personal protection equipment. The selection of objects (masks with filters, ear savers to complement the masks, medical gowns, masks with decorative designs, protective screens, postcards, respirators, T-shirts and mugs alluding to lockdown, posters for institutional campaigns, etc.) was an interesting case of art being combined with memory. Exhibitions of objects have a cathartic value and can encapsulate the memory of places, times and identities. Objects are durable, keep memories alive and make it possible to configure new spaces and meanings.

Image 3.

Exhibition ‘COVID-19: Open your eyes’: Diocesan Museum, Barcelona. Mock-up of a room in which people with social problems spent lockdown (Photo: Caritas Diocesana de Barcelona).

Image 4.

Exhibition ‘Emergency. Designs to combat COVID-19’. Museu del Disseny, Barcelona (Photo: Museu del Disseny).

Most exhibitions, however, have been online. Online exhibitions by museums have generated numerous debates for several years (Hoffman, 2020; Pescarin, 2014; Schweibenz, 2019; Styliani et al., 2009) and they generate new ways of showing and expressing ideas, raising possibilities for change in both content and form. During the pandemic, virtual exhibitions have proved to be a good resource give the impossibility of on-site visits and there has been a considerable increase in online presentation of exhibitions, collections or groups of works (King et al., 2021). Formats employed have been very varied, including both the initiatives of the museums themselves and initiatives that begin on the museums’ social networks and end up being published on their websites.

1. Exhibitions based on photographs or documents provided by the users themselves, as part of a participatory museological approach. One example of this type of exhibition is the virtual museum ‘Mural’ created by the National Museum of Anthropology in Madrid⁹ (Image 5). The museum invited users to contribute audio-visual materials on the pandemic and its consequences. The exhibition was composed of photographs and videos classified in different virtual ‘rooms’:

Windows on the world, a collage of photographs showing views onto the street or natural world from participants’ windows.

Nearby heritage highlights the importance of physical objects through videos of contributors’ explaining why a certain object was important to them during lockdown.

New daily life demonstrates the consequences of living with COVID-19 in photographs that show characteristic items, such as ambulances, social distancing marks and family celebrations with masks.

The new otherness shows the ‘new me’, or the new personal image by means of selfies of people with masks.

2. Online exhibitions with images of domestic objects as if they were museum objects. In this way, the walls of museums are broken down and raise awareness of the fact that personal and domestic objects are, in a certain way, ‘heritage’. These actions were prompted by the need to act on the part of museums that had been closed, but they also seem to open the door to a new museum concept developed by several ‘domestic museums’. The Museum of Asturian People, for example, proposed sharing a household object representing lockdown via social media, under the hashtag #elmuseoencasa (the museum at home). The initiative was not so much about objects specifically related to lockdown, but rather to household objects that had a special meaning to users. Clocks, kitchen equipment, old clothes, old cameras, keys, books and a whole range of other objects were shared, the aim being to fill the void left by the museum during closure. Similarly, the Ecomuseum of the Valls d’Àneu in Catalonia, invited the public to share ‘objects with history’ that people may have at home. This meant old items that were worthy of being in the museum’s collection, but for whatever reason, were in a private home. This enabled the museum to create a so-called ‘virtual ethnological museum’ that existed exclusively on social media.¹⁰ The interesting thing about these initiatives was the invitation to share memories of the past; in fact, many lockdown initiatives involved a return to the past, a way of putting down roots in the memory of ‘tradition’ to overcome the trauma of the present.

3. Exhibitions of photographs by professionals. Several museums commissioned photographers to report on lockdown. For example, Reina Sofía National Museum Art Centre (Madrid) staged an online exhibition of photographs which describe people’s experience of lockdown at home, both a refuge and a place of hostility. Each protagonist narrated their most personal experiences in a creative manner: living with a parent in lockdown, the end of a pregnancy and support networks for groups with different needs.

4. Exhibitions of art related to COVID-19. The Covid Art Museum (Image 6),¹¹ was an initiative of three publicists from Barcelona, is entirely digital and has displayed work from artists from all over the world. The museum is located on Instagram, and anyone is able to send a suggestion for a photograph or a recording and must wait for it to be accepted and published. This online initiative is one of the best-known artistic initiatives and offers content that expresses experiences and perceptions in a poetic or artistic way. The work displayed describes aspects of the pandemic, such as the safety distance, panic buying in supermarkets, masks, loneliness, toilet paper¹² and personal relationships. It helps to foster both memories of times during the pandemic and of the new society it has left in its wake.

COVID-19 has prompted us to experiment and has engendered research, new proposals and the building of bridges between different digital platforms. (Hoffman, 2020). All the exhibitions we have described suggest a new role for museums and the manner in which they create memory. In our opinion, despite their ephemeral nature, these emergency exhibitions will have a significant influence on the creation of the memory of the pandemic, due to their local interpretation of global events.

Image 5.

Room in the ‘Mural’ virtual museum, entitled ‘La otra otredad’ (The other otherness) National Museum of Anthropology. Madrid (screenshot).

Image 6.

The COVID Art Museum. Instagram (screenshot).

Conclusion

The three different areas we have studied – documenting, exhibiting and expression on social networks – suggest five main conclusions.

The various memory institutions in Spain have run emergency campaigns to document the pandemic, with considerable amounts of imagination and some improvisation. The aims have been more about generating the involvement their public and communicating with them than about building contemporary collections aimed at constructing a collective memory of COVID-19. This is logical, given the circumstances, but it remains to be seen whether these campaigns will generally serve to document the pandemic, or whether museums will have to undertake specific and more planned initiatives for future physical or virtual exhibitions.

Most of these initiatives have been online, which was not only due to the forced closure of the museums, but also due to the fact that most of the events to be documented were being represented online. Furthermore, digitalisation has been essential for constructing memory of COVID-19 as it offers a platform for access and interaction that is well established among the general population and facilitates the display, sharing and recreation of spaces and items of memory. During the pandemic, initiatives were often improvised, but in time more lasting materials may result. It remains to be seen whether there will be a move from the virtual to the physical (as some museums, exhibitions attempted) or whether most content will remain digital. It also remains to be seen how all this material will be classified and used, since not only is there a plethora of material, but given the urgency of the situation, not all museums have established clear protocols for the handling and documentation of these new collections.

In terms of public participation, it has mainly been the public itself that has taken control over social networks and virtual spaces. Traditional archives and museums have driven institutional activities, but they have been increasingly challenged by the emergence of digital networks and peer-to-peer memory practices (Liebermann, 2020). These spaces of communication and interaction will play a key role in the representation of memory and in the future behaviour and work of museums themselves. Collective memory is now being constructed in social networks and is an essential dimension of this legacy.

This is the first time that museum institutions have sought to describe, understand, and represent a worldwide event through testimonies and objects contributed by the public. The museums now have many documents, objects and testimonies that were collected as the events were taking place. Therefore, in the future, these institutions will play a key role in shaping the public memory of the COVID-19 period. The fact that the collections were mostly made by means of collaborative museology will lead to a more ‘democratic’ process in how they are formed. In past processes of memory, museums have played a key role as a public and political organ responsible for the creation of ‘official’ unidirectional memory narratives, but COVID-19 memories, constructed in collaborative processes, seem to represent a break with traditional ways in which museums have contributed to the creation of official narratives. This research shows us that representation of memory in museums is no longer only established by authorised heritage discourse (Smith, 2006), but is nourished by a wide variety of public experiences.

Finally, social networks have also played a crucial role in configuring memories of this period. Memory institutions have used them not only to gather information, but also to achieve greater public participation. Social media raise new issues for these institutions, especially regarding the interrelationship between formal institutional records and informal records from social networks. Although there are doubts that this type of record can form part of institutional archives, they should be considered in a society in which the circulation of information is increasingly multidirectional.

In many respects, the example of Spain can be extrapolated to what has happened in the museums and archives of many countries, although more studies and a longer perspective over time are needed. For museums, these initiatives have entailed a profound reflection on the formation of collections and their role in the construction of collective memories. Museum and archive institutions have collected a wealth of documents and objects that can be used to construct narratives on the lockdown, but social media may also act as complementary archives to those of institutions. The memory of the pandemic is being constructed within a multiplicity of narratives that museums and archives can channel.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities and the FEDER Program, grant number PGC2018-096190-B-I00 (‘Patrimonio inmaterial y politicas culturales: desafios sociales, politicos y museológicos’) and grant number PID2021-123063NB-I00 (‘Patrimonio inmaterial y museos ante los retos de la sostenibilidad cultural. Politicas, estrategias y metodologias en la era postcovid’).

ORCID iDs

Xavier Roigé

Alejandra Canals

Marta Rico

Notes

Author biographies

Xavier Roigé is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology and Museology at University of Barcelona. He is the author of several publications on museology and management of heritage. He has directed different research projects on the social and political uses of cultural heritage, as well as on the treatment of memory in museums.

Alejandra Canals is Associate Lecturer in Museology at University of Barcelona. She has conducted research and publications on cultural heritage, intangible heritage and the representation of indigenous peoples in museums.

Marta Rico is Associate Lecturer in Social Anthropology at University of Barcelona. She has conducted research and publications on family transformations, the uses of digital heritage and intangible heritage.

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