The Great Pandemics Archive: A Capsule in Time
Exciting Update: The Great Pandemics Archive has been acquired by The New York Public Library. It will be archived and available to the general public for viewing next year.
People from around the world were invited to submit a variety of paper ephemera to The Great Pandemics Archive documenting the multiple pandemics the world faced in 2020 that illustrate the human cost and consequence of these natural and human disasters. Submissions could include any relevant advertisements, photos, letters, writings (personal accounts, essays, poetry, etc), newspaper clippings, artwork, postcards, and documents no larger than 9 x 12 inches, ten pages maximum, along with a submission agreement.
Organized by NYC artists and social archivists, Jamie Courville and Ed Woodham.
Read the original press release here.
Some examples of submissions:
Artist and educator Nicky Enright had students contribute to The Great Pandemics Archive.
Jion Tsuzuki
Mia Slowik
A drawing left by Antonio Paul at a donation station at Brooklyn Public Library
In Inner Landscape by Sheldon Walsmith
Emily Maffezzoli
Daniel Keswin
Antonio Paul
Drawing by Sheldon Walsmith. “A drawing discipline was already established to fill in the blanks of down time while travelling. When lockdown occurred I turned this practice on the idea of conscripted isolation. The hundreds of drawings I made are not about the pandemic rather, in the larger picture, they speak to a monumental sense of interiority.”