Chicago History Museum seeking submissions for digital COVID-19 exhibit

CHICAGO (WLS) -- The Chicago History Museum is putting together a new, digital exhibit on COVID-19, and they your help.

The Chicago History Museum wants to document how people are living through the pandemic through your stories and experiences, for their exhibit, appropriately called In This Together.

"How are people dealing with COVID-19, how are they dealing with the stay at home orders, parents dealing with education their kids at home, learning to distance teach for the first time, all of the implications of this will be lost to our memories, in part because there's so much of it happening at once," said John Russick, senior vice president of the Chicago History Museum.

The History Museum is asking the public to submit these experiences on-line to its website.

"We imagine that could come to us in the form of text...it could also be recorded in video, or in still photography or in art that people are making as a means of expression,' Russick said.

COVID-19 has affected almost everyone and it's those unique experiences the museum is looking for. In TV news, many are broadcasting from home - In Roz's case, she sets up and breaks down her kitchen studio every day.

Eventually the museum like to add physical objects to this exhibit, like masks, or signs, but not until they are no longer needed during the pandemic.

They want these experiences to represent all of Chicagoland, every neighborhood, all ages, races and backgrounds.

"Our story, is, at least in part, if not almost in total, a story of a resilient population that continues to bounce back," Russick said. "I think we're going to see continuing themes of resilience, of determination, of commitment, of community that are just going to come through time and again."

This project is uncharted waters for the History Museum, saying that when they start an exhibit they already have the collection to present to the public and in this the story it will come to them as the people tells the story!

For more information on the exhibit, visit www.chicagohistory.org/covid19history.