Museum collection details life in pandemic
The marquee at what used to be George’s Nightclub in downtown San Rafael read “FRI NURSES NITE OUT” and “SAT DJ.”
The sight of it, amid the coronavirus shutdown on an empty Fourth Street, gave Carolyn Jones an eerie feeling, she said.
“In the before times, nurses had a special night in a nightclub,” said Jones, a San Rafael resident. “Now they’re taking care of sick people.”
She made a painting of the scene and submitted it to the Marin History Museum, which is collecting stories, artwork and photographs to document life during the pandemic.
“It started with an awareness that we’re living through a historic time and history is being made right now,” said Heather Powell, collections manager of the nonprofit museum.
Last year, Powell began a project to collect pandemicrelated artifacts, such as face masks that were customized with school logos, or materials that businesses put on their windows to encourage safe shopping. This month, as a expansion of that project, the museum put out a call for submissions that tell the story of what it’s like to live through the pandemic.
“Museums are not just about collecting objects, but also stories,” Powell said. “It is our hope that by gathering and preserving personal reflections and artworks from the community, along with physical objects, we will be more able to accurately tell the story of the impact of the pandemic on the lives of people in Marin County for future audiences.”
Powell said the project was inspired by similar efforts underway at the California Historical Society and the Mill Valley Public Library. The San Anselmo Historical Society also started a similar project last year.
Powell said the Marin History Museum, like the San Anselmo organization, looked back at its artifacts and discovered it had a lack of information about the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918.
“We have this great picture of Red Cross nurses marching down Fourth Street wearing masks, but really that’s about all there is,” Powell said. “We didn’t want a repeat of that.”
Powell said the first items added to the collection were photographs from a Marin Catholic photography class whose members took pictures of their lives during the pandemic. She consulted with the staff at the history room at the Mill Valley library to get the project
going.
Natalie Snoyman, the archivist at the Mill Valley library, said in addition to collecting photos and short stories, the library has started conducting audio interviews with business owners in the community. The interviews, and the 175 submissions the library has received, are going to be digitized and made accessible through the history room’s collection database, she said.
In addition to the painting by Jones, the Marin History Museum received a collection of poems by Lisa Cohen, who lives in a senior housing site in San Rafael.
Cohen said the pandemic has brought on isolation, and one of her poems called “Wrapped in a Cocoon of Love,” is about longing for the warmth and comfort of a hug.
“This is a good way for
people to express what they’re going through,” Cohen said. “We have to say what has been happening. It’s good to have a record.”
The Marin History Museum is seeking essays, journal entries, letters,
poetry, photographs and art. Submissions will be kept in the collections database. Many will be shared on social media channels and could be part of a exhibit.
More information is at marinhistory.org.