Virtual exhibit chronicles local COVID history

Jun. 19—SUNY Oneonta students created a virtual museum exhibit highlighting the creativity and culture expressions of local residents during the coronavirus pandemic.

The exhibit, "Alone, Together: cultural expression in Oneonta during the COVID-19 pandemic," showcases the creative works of more than a dozen local artists, musicians, writers and ordinary citizens, according to William Walker, associate professor of history at the Cooperstown Graduate Program and the exhibit's curator.

"It's an exploration of how Oneontans have endured and expressed themselves creatively and culturally through the pandemic," he said.

While the virus-ravaged campus repeatedly made national headlines, the students in Walker's class took a look behind the quietly closed doors of the city, bridging the social distance into the personal and professional spheres of their friends and neighbors to document the ways in which they navigated the challenges of the "new normal."

The exhibit is the capstone project for a semester-long anthropology course called "exhibiting cultures in museums," Walker said.

The class emphasizes community engagement, Walker said, requiring his students work with each other and with community members to achieve a first-person understanding of the works on display.

The former course instructor, Sally Hahn, always curated a physical exhibit, Walker said, "but we knew in this COVID year that wouldn't be a possibility."

After some trial and error, Walker said he landed on a German-designed three-dimensional immersive digital platform, Kunstmatrix, to host his students' exhibit.

"I wanted them to have an experience creating an exhibit in space, not just on a website," he said.

The platform allows viewers to "walk" through a digital rendering of a physical gallery space, navigating the installments and their explainer labels with the click of a mouse.

Walker said he posed the idea to his class as a general assignment, but they quickly indicated they wanted the exhibition centered in Oneonta.

Laura Santos, a rising senior from South Carolina, worked with Evan Jagels, a local bass player who collaborated with other musicians in a series he called "improvignettes."

"The pandemic gave him time to create his own voice and work on projects he's been wanting to do but never had the time," Santos said.

Another display showcased the Stay at Home Choir, a virtual collaboration of more than 23,000 musicians from all over the world, Santos said.

Santos, an anthropology major with her sights set on the museum studies program at the Cooperstown Graduate Program, said she was thrilled by the opportunity to help build an exhibit from scratch.

The exhibit was not Santos' first. As an intern with the Greater Oneonta Historical Society, she said she helped build an exhibit called "Up from the ashes: Oneonta Shaped by Fire" and contributed to the most recent display, "Oneonta Collects History," which showcases objects from three local collections spanning more than a century of Oneonta's commercial history.

"It's amazing to take what you're learning and turn right around and apply it," Santos said.

Visit bit.ly/alonetogetherexhibit to view the exhibit.

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