On 8 and 9 October 2020, the Reinwardt Academy hosted the digital conference Ethnology Lab on the Workings of Covid-19 on Museums. The online gathering was coordinated in close collaboration with the Working Group on Museums and Material Culture of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF), as well as ICOM’s International Committee for Collecting (COMCOL). The programme was geared to address the challenges faced by museums and cultural heritage institutions in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. With this the organisers set out to provide a virtual platform for museum professionals and academics to establish a dialogue with one another, and in so doing, explore matters of common concern. These included some of the transformative shifts observed recently in the collection dynamics of museal and archival institutions, changes in the conception of participatory and inclusiveness strategies, and the emergence of new possibilities for cultural programming and exhibiting against the backdrop of uncertainty.
Based on actual observations in their respective organisations, participants weighed in the impact of museological and ethnological considerations. Their position as such helped them to abstract themselves from purely practical concerns, allowing them to focus on what is it that truly shapes a person’s experience during a pandemic. This resulted in a broad variety of reflections on cultural management, everyday life as a museum professional, the meaning of (re)presentation and the intricacies of being situated in a particular living and working environment. This publication offers a selection of these reflections, 5 organised in four different themes: collecting during crises, practical challenges, academic reflections and policy reflections.