Using journals and texts, exhibit takes visitors back to the early moments of the pandemic

On June 2, 2020 at 3:37 p.m., Vanessa Chevez wrote down her worries. She worried about police brutality. She worried about an invasion of so-called murder hornets threatening bee populations. She worried about the spread of COVID-19.

"Everything has been crazy," she wrote.

Chevez's letter is one of numerous pieces of history now on display at the Providence Public Library as part of its "Picturing the Pandemic" exhibit up now through June. It draws from two sources: The Pandemic Journaling Project launched by Brown University and University of Connecticut anthropologists, and the Rhode Island COVID-19 Archive created by the library and the Rhode Island Historical Society. Both served to document global and local experiences of the pandemic in a range of media from journals to photos, videos and artwork.

Submissions include the personal and the seemingly normalized, such as emergency alerts sent via mass texts that triggered panic-inducing tones.

The library Programs and Exhibitions Director Christina Bevilacqua, who helped to curate the exhibit with Community Partnership Facilitator Sophia Ellis, had forgotten about those messages, which now she hopes will transport viewers to a not-too-distant past.

To Bevilacqua, "this captures this moment in a way that no one will ever be able to describe, other than when you look at this, and if you lived through it, it will bring you back to this."

Here's what to expect at the exhibit

Those who walk into the library's third-floor gallery space will find continuously running videos projected onto the walls with a stream of footage replaying pandemic moments. A slideshow, printed photos, reproductions of drawings from local artists and quotes from diaries will also be displayed.

Kate Mason — a Brown University anthropology professor who co-founded the Pandemic Journaling Project with Sarah Willen, a University of Connecticut anthropology professor — said the writings, submitted anonymously, had two things in common: "a lot of deep loneliness" and "a lot of fear and uncertainty."

But they weren't solely focused on COVID-19.

"One thing we found out really early on is that people were not just writing about the pandemic," Mason said. "They’re writing about the pandemic and the 2020 election. The pandemic and the murder of George Floyd. The pandemic and the January 6th insurrection. There are all these different things happening, so people didn’t separate those out in their own experiences or their own minds."

Exhibit will travel, feature more than one location

In addition to the library's exhibit, visitors can see satellite exhibits at three locations on Brown's campus: The Stephen Robert Campus Center, the Population Studies and Training Center and the Swearer Center, which will open its show on Friday.

The exhibit, which held its first show at the Hartford Public Library in October 2022, will also travel to Heidelberg, Germany in April and Mexico City in May.

What about documentation of past health crises?

Kate Wells, who curates the library's Rhode Island collections and was one of the founders of the COVID-19 Archive, said that when the exhibit was being put together, the library and the historical society searched for any documentation of previous crises such as AIDS, influenza or polio. Instead of finding personal accounts, they ended up with city and state reports and health statistics. It appears no one had bothered to record and save everyday experiences in any official manner.

"Nobody thought to collect it," Wells said.

Perhaps when large numbers of people were experiencing the same viruses, they may not have thought of their own stories as unique and historically valuable. The current COVID-19 exhibit aims to change that thinking.

At the exhibit, visitors can sit to write or draw and add their memories or contribute online in any medium including photos, videos, texts and sound.

"This exhibition does not say COVID is over, but it does say that we have gone a distance and that it is a moment to think about where were you when you first realized that this was happening," Bevilacqua said. "What were your feelings then?"

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Providence Public Library opens "Picturing the Pandemic" exhibit