The Loudoun Museum will soon launch a community archive that documents life for Loudouners during the COVID-19 pandemic. For the last five months, the museum has been collecting digital submissions of photos, personal narratives and scanned documents from the community. To date, the museum has received nearly 200 submissions.
“We wanted to invite the community to tell their story because it’s always very valuable to have people kind of interpret their own history,” said Loudoun Museum’s Visitor Experience Manager, Andrea Ekholm. “To hear first-people narratives—it’s powerful.”
Submissions have included artwork, songs, and stories of what people have been up to during quarantine. Ekholm said people have shared stories of how they picked up old hobbies or found new ones. She also said a bulk of submissions have been from area youth. Having the historical perspective from teenagers is a welcome rarity for the museum.
Brooke Sears of Chantilly submitted a digital drawing of a video conference call. It depicts some of the people most affected by COVID, including herself as a high school student, her aunt as a nurse, and a friend of hers as a 2020 graduate.
High school junior, Anika Sharma of Ashburn, shared her letter exchange with friends during COVID. Those letters will also be a part of the public archive.
This submission, in particular, parallels nicely with a blog series featured on the Loudoun Museum’s website from an earlier pandemic. In 1901, Laura Stanton wrote the letters to her mother in Ashburn while under quarantine for potential exposure to smallpox while attending Vassar College in New York. The personal account makes this historic narrative relevant and relatable to the 2020 COVID pandemic.
Ekholm said the Stanton letters, was one of the inspirations for creating the COVID-19 community archive for the county. You can find the letters transcribed on the blog. “Maybe in 100 years people will use this archive to understand how Loudoun County responded and felt (during COVID),” she said.
The museum will accept submissions that highlight experiences specific to Loudoun County during the COVID-19 pandemic even once the website is launched. Visit the Loudoun Museum blog and find details on how to submit your digital artifacts at loudounmuseum.org/blog.
About the Loudoun Museum
16 Loudoun Street SW Leesburg, Virginia 20175
Hours: Fri-Sun 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Free Admission
Masks are required while in the museum
Closes from 1:00-1:30 to clean the museum
