Webinar | First Hand: Creating COVID Collections
In order to inculcate interest among the students in particular and public in general, Regional Science Centre (RSC) Calicut organised a number of webinars on various topics of scientific interest. One of them was ‘First Hand: Creating COVID Collections’.
As families, communities and colleagues around the world grapple in their own ways with the invisible threat of the novel coronavirus, humankind shares an unusually acute sense of traversing a period of deep historical import. Once-bustling downtown areas sit deserted while citizens everywhere sequester themselves for the common good. Social media platforms and teleconferencing services are ablaze with the messages of isolated friends and loved ones. As medical workers risk their lives daily to keep ballooning death tolls in check, musicians and comedians broadcast from their own homes in the hopes of lifting the spirits of a beleaguered nation. It is a time of both ascendant empathy and exposed prejudice, of collective fear for the present and collective hope for a brighter future.
It is, in short, a time that demands to be documented. Stories institutional, communal and personal abound, and it is the difficult mandate of museums everywhere to collect this history as it happens while safeguarding both the public they serve and their own talented team members. This challenge is magnified in the case of our Council as 25 of our centres have been closed to visitors since March 2020. We thought we may request a series of renowned Historians to chart a path how the museums should prepare to collect and document the current time.
The speaker is a Historian of repute and a museologist par excellence. We hear from Dr. Sabyasachi Mukherjee the Director General, Chatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya on 25th May at 4 PM.
As families, communities and colleagues around the world grapple in their own ways with the invisible threat of the novel coronavirus, humankind shares an unusually acute sense of traversing a period of deep historical import.
