Are We Doing This Right? How Do You ‘Museum’ When Faced With The COVID Curveball?

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Collections Management in the Age of COVID-19" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

On the 16th of March our jobs as we knew them changed drastically. All employees of The George Washington Foundation were ordered to work from home with no set date to return. What was predicted to be a few weeks turned into two and a half months. For an archaeology department in a museum this posed numerous challenges including how to remotely care for our large artifact collection and share it with outside researchers. Even after we returned to work and eventually reopened the museum to the public our new normal looked vastly different from the pre-pandemic days. This paper details how our department has been adapting to numerous changes due to COVID while continuing to be good stewards to over a million artifacts.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Collections Management in the Age of COVID-19   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2021

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology