Museum aims to chronicle lockdown history
Invitation to send photos of objects ‘that bring joy’
AT THE moment it is an inconvenience and a worry, but the nation’s locked-down lives will one day be viewed as social history.
And a Yorkshire museum has stepped in to capture people’s experiences before the moment is lost.
Families across the county are today being invited to create “virtual exhibits” of themselves and their families in isolation, to be put on display when it’s all over and then kept for posterity.
Curators in Doncaster, who devised the project, say their “living room museum” will help bring separated people together by “celebrating a shared history of happiness and memories”.
Victoria Ryves, the programme manager for Heritage Doncaster, said: “We are living in history.
“Museums are here to tell stories, and it seems obvious that the one we should be telling when we open is what has gone on in this moment of history.”
Her team has launched an initiative to capture the living rooms and other household spaces in which adults and children inside and outside Doncaster are social distancing.
Contributors are asked to photograph objects special to them, with a descriptive exhibit label. A selection will then go on display in the new Danum gallery, which
takes its name from Doncaster’s Roman fort, when it opens later in the year, as well as online.
A pilot project among the friends of museum staff has unearthed such artefacts as a piece of driftwood taken as a souvenir from a beach and turned into a photo frame, as well as several household pets.
“All those things are someone’s treasures. They have just as much right to be in a museum as anything else,” Ms Ryves said.
Despite the proliferation of photographs being taken on phones, it remained unusual to see inside someone else’s house, she noted.
“Given how much we now know about people’s lives, there still aren’t many pictures of what their homes look like over periods of time. So the fact that we’re asking people to let us into their private spaces is quite unusual.
“In 100 years’ time when people are looking back, the type of things we keep, and what we find important, might be very different to theirs.”
It was the same thought that had led to the commissioning,
Victoria Ryves, programme manager for Heritage Doncaster.
long before the current lock-in, of another exhibit at the new museum – a mock-up of a typical Doncaster living room of the 1960s.
“Museums collect objects that tell stories, and people’s homes are full of such objects,” Ms Ryves said. “So we’re encouraging people to have a look around their house and select everyday objects that bring a sense of joy, and arrange them just as they would if they were putting them on display in a museum.”
Her team had already been charged with documenting the community history of Doncaster, and in particular the issues of isolation and loneliness.
“Isolation and connectedness have never been more relevant or important,” she said.
“Until recent times, most of us had no idea what it felt like to be isolated – spending hours, even days without talking to another human being. Now, these projects are relevant for all us.”
Museums collect objects that tell stories, homes are full of such objects.