Talk of The Rock: The Kodiak History Museum’s new COVID exhibit

Listen to this story:

Play

Poems, pictures, news articles, Facebook memes- all of these and more will be featured in a December exhibit the Kodiak History Museum is putting together on COVID-19.

Museum curator Lynn Walker appeared on KMXT’s Talk of the Rock program recently to describe how the museum crowdsourced the exhibit from Kodiak locals.

Listen to the Talk of the Rock episode here:

Play

“The exhibit is using materials that we collected through the day by day initiative started last year, where people could send in anything kind of COVID related, whether it be photos of when they’re in quarantine, memes that they saw on Facebook or any other social media, news articles, personal reflections, kind of anything that embodied what they were going through. And so we are using that collection, and we’re collecting new materials for the exhibit, and we’re going to be showing them in either digital or printed format,” Walker said.

Walker says the exhibit is still being formed before its planned December debut, but it will be a physical exhibit, travelling to four different yet to be announced locations in town before being settled later in the museum next March.

“We’re playing around with idea that each site is going to have like a different theme. Maybe one week, we’ll focus extra heavily on COVID hobbies. So it will show people cooking or, you know, making bread. So it’s gonna change, some things will stay the same, but it’s going to be different photos, different materials, and everything.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has been divisive and traumatic in a physical, mental and political sense. Walker acknowledges that politics is part of the COVID history, and intends to include that in the exhibit.

“I wanted to show the full experience of COVID and Kodiak and not really censor it. I didn’t want to censor it apart from… maybe foul language. But anyway, I didn’t want to censor opinions or anything like that, because the museum is a great forum for these discussions. And I really wanted this exhibit to kind of be that for Kodiak. So I welcome any and all political stories,” Walker said.

The exhibit will also have a digital component, with material exhibited online. Videos, photos, audio clips, and text will all be featured in the exhibit.

While there’s plenty of material for the exhibit, there’s still more collecting to do. Those interested in submitting material to the exhibit can do so by emailing curator@kodiakhistorymuseum.org

 

 

Check Also

Kodiak Fisheries Workgroup setting priorities and action items to help local fishers after four year hiatus

The Kodiak’s Fisheries Workgroup wants to host informational forums to speed along fish-related action items …

%d bloggers like this: