We are mostly working remotely. Our Museum Closed in march, but we began thinking about the pandemic in january. We are a division of medical historians and we tend to follow the news pretty carefully, especially news about Public Health. So we actually reached out and began speaking with the Public Health service in january because we began thinking about how to collect document this story. So it has been a long process and we have kind of ramped up as we have come home to think about collecting. At what point did you realize this pandemic would stretch into the fall and potential winter . As historians, we have definitely thought about difficulties inherent in making a vaccine and we were pretty sure this pandemic would last a fair amount of time and we would need to remain at home for some months while a vaccine was being created. They were keeping things week by week in the museum. Before mid march, what were your job duties and what has changed in the last couple months . I oversee a division of historians of medicine and historians of science. When the pandemic was beginning we were actually very deep into , the planning part of it and began to think about changing our exhibits. We thought it would be important to include covid19. That meant that we needed to thinking about collecting objects related to covid19. We would need to do that anyway because we do collect objects as history unfolds, but now it became an imperative especially in regards to the exhibit we are planning. We went to our designers and ask them in Harry Potterish way roomld you find some extra so we could have a section on covid19, so that has become a center point of been of our exhibit. It is not that everything in American History leads up to covid19, but our visitors are going to want to understand the path of where we were before covid19 when they come. So many ways, it has reshaped the exhibit. Harry potterish, what you need by that . When they create an exhibit, they make a plan that accounts for every inch within the exhibit. So we started to play in all of that out and we knew we needed an additional section to deal with covid19 and so we basically have to go to our designers and ask if they can find extra room in their plan. And they are wonderful in helping us to find that extra room. It meant shifting a lot of the exhibit around. So they found the extra we needed to tell that story. So that extra room will include what . We are in the middle of collecting objects around covid19, and we have done a lot of thinking about which objects are most iconic and will tell powerful stories about the event. The ventilator is something we are looking at. Americans hear about the ventilators but they do not honest they do not necessarily know what it looks like or how it works. So we are thinking about putting that in the exhibit. We also know that masks are an essential part of this story. Every american is living in a place where they are asked is masks. So we feel that is a story that represents all american. That might be an object we include. We also think about test kits as well. The faulty ones and those that have been more effective if. It takes on how long to create a vaccine, we have even thought about leaving an empty space in an exhibit which demonstrates a vaccine is coming. That we have an empty, blank space for the moment. It really depends on when our exhibit is able to open, what is happening and how the story spins out. Right now it is very much up in the air. A lot will depend on the vaccine and therapeutics that allow us to return to life as normal. Best expectation, when do you think this will be for the public to view . It was originally scheduled for 2021, and now were thinking it will be pushed into 2022, as all of the work on the exhibits, fabrication, has been stalled at the museum. Theets go back to one of last major pandemics. So much attention on 1918. We have seen so many pictures. What do you have that continues to tell that story . Out, that ispoint not really the last endemic we had. We had the hivaids pandemic but there also was an an influenza pandemic in 1957 and 1988 and then in 1968 and 1969. The 19th 18 pandemic is the one we are most familiar with in the 20 entry and interestingly, we at the Museum Actually dont have any objects that relate to that, and there are multiple reasons for that. One is the National Museum of American History did not really exist in the same way. But the other issue is that although we are very aware of a of that pandemic now and talk a great deal about it now, in the 1920s, people really wanted to get what happened. One of the scholars that wrote about the pandemic in the 1970s called his book the forgotten pandemic because people tried to put it in the past. So the fact that we dont have any objects is really not that surprising. Are other museums doing what you are doing right now to try to chronicle this moment . And preserve it for future historians . Yes. Many museums are trying to document covid19. We have been in touch and working with colleagues in medical museums across the u. S. To talk to them about collecting because we think this is such a huge collecting initiative that we really need to coordinate and talk to one another so that we understand what our colleagues are doing elsewhere so that we can document the story without replicating that others are doing. It is such a huge stories and as you can imagine all museums have , limited space. So it has just been a fair amount of coordination. Processing that story, are you collecting material you think potentially could be used by some of your successors years from now . Absolutely. We know the object we bring in will be of interest to historians. We know that because we have a fabulous medical selection in the museum right now. We have a collection that has objects dating back several 1000 years. Not just american medical objects, but also Roman Medical objects as well. Inalways have scholars come and study these objects on write about them. I also know that my colleagues in the future will also be using some of those objects to do in exhibit on the covid19 pandemic. This is such a huge event. That hard for me to think 100 years from now the museum would not be doing in the bit about covid19 so when visitors walk through potentially in 2022, what do you want them to learn . One thing to learn is that pandemics have always been with us, and will always be with us. There were a series of pandemics in the 20th century. It is probably hard for us, befor covid19, to empathize or understand what it was like to live during a pandemic. The kind of fears people had, worries about how to protect themselves. So when we originally began planning the exhibit, and the exhibit opened with a pandemic that occurred in the United States before 1860, we talked a lot about how do we get our visitors to understand what it is like to live through a pandemic. We know they will come in with a very different understanding of what that feels like, so what we are really trying to do is show them the different approaches medicine has taken over the euros, the way the things we germand accept such as theory, microorganisms cause disease, it was a long time before people actually began to accept that idea and it began to inform the practice of medicine. We talk about revolutions in medicine but those revolutions are fairly slow. The other thing we want our visitors to understand is the very different way that disease has impacted different groups in america very differently. Obviously, if you were a part of the native American Community in the 19th century, your experience with disease would have been radically different. From someone who might have been a member of the white elites in the northeast. Steve this is a Public Health issue and medical issue and also a political issue in 2020. Is there a way to deal with all of that . Alexandra it is interesting as a historian to think about the different ways politics and culture always shape the responses to pandemic. The tension we are seeing over mask wearing, that was fairly widespread, fairly common in 1918, 1919. The race for a vaccine, the technological element to the story, that occurred in 1957 and 1958 as we were trying to control the influenza pandemic, but there are a lot of parallels in a lot of ways in which these epidemics are shaped, pretty much by the issues we confront in our society today. Health care obviously reflects racial disparities. That has a long history that is deeply rooted in American History and we want our visitors to understand that as well. Steve as you go through this process so far, what has intrigued you the most or surprised you the most . Alexandra that is an interesting question because multiple things have surprised me. When we first began, we were somewhat uncertain as to whether or not this would emerge into a fullblown pandemic. As you know, there was a sars outbreak previously and the mers outbreak previously, so we were a little uncertain as to whether it could become quite as widespread and massive a pandemic in the way it has become. That was oddly surprising to us even though as historians, we all knew we were long overdue for a pandemic. We still were shocked by how quickly this escalated and how widespread it became and that is obviously the result of rapidity, the rapid nature of travel in the world today. So that was shocking for us to see that play out, even though we kind of expected to see it. It is one thing to think about something theoretically and another to see it play out. In terms of the surprise, i have been surprised by the vehemence and pushback that has happened over mask wearing. In 1918 and 1919 i think the pushback was understandable because people did not grasp germ theory in the way we do today, so i have been surprised. I have been surprised at the extent to which the pushback has occurred. Steve are you getting oral histories and will that be included in this . Alexandra yes. We have asked americans to contact us with their story or objects they may have. We are collecting those stories in the emails. That has been very interesting for us. We are also planning to do oral histories in the long run. We would like to do them with practitioners and also ordinary americans. That is a longrange project for us, because we historians always like to cheat. We like to have hindsight whenever we do a story. We do not believe we will be doing oral history for about two years. We are also looking to budget for that and so we will need to plan ahead. That is a major part of the project we would like to do. Steve and what is your background . Why did you decide to pursue this area in history . Alexandra i went to the university of wisconsin. I have a phd in history with a focus on medical history. We had a separate department in the history of medicine. I became really fascinated by this when i was an undergraduate and i was studying not American History, but italian history, looking at the medici family in the 15th century, 16th century florence. I was really struck by the prevalence of disease and the way disease shapes peoples lives on a daytoday basis that it did not do for us today and that is really what fascinates me. Germ theory has radically transformed the world we live in. We never think about this. We never think what it means to turn on the water and expect to have water. We do not think about sanitary measures in places we go to like hospitals. We take this for granted. That i think leads us to have a difficult time empathizing or understanding the world of the past. If we are to understand the world of the past, we have to start by thinking about how very different disease was in that period. It would not have been uncommon for most people, they would have experienced the death of a sibling or parent. We do not have those experiences today. When i thought about people in the past, to me that is one of the largest differences in the way that they live and the way that we live today. That fascinates me. Steve lexi lori is with the smithsonian National Museum of American History. Thank you for joining us on cspan3s American History tv. Alexandra thank you for inviting me. Steve you are watching American History tv. 48 hours of programming on American History every weekend. Follow us on twitter for more information on our schedule and to keep up with the latest history news. Presidency, on the we will see abraham lincolns summer cottage, herbert hoovers fishing camp and hear stories of the kennedys, clintons and obamas in Marthas Vineyard during a forum hosted by the White House Historical association. Your we are on the porch of the brown house. Hooverhave told me that was a dour man without a sense of humor but i doubt that. I think it is kind of fun that he named this the brown hout. Get it . White house, brown house. His is where the hoovers were and derived a lot of peace rejuvenation from the outdoors, so when misses hoover decided the camp, which she was responsible for the details, she wanted to look for ways to bring the outdoors in and provide Great Outdoor spaces. All the cabins have wonderful decks. I want to take you with to a particular feature of this deck. Notice this panel right here and these hinges. We will talk about that in a few minutes. It looks like there is a problem. If you look down here, you see a hole in the deck. That was on purpose. The hoovers, being lovers of nature, they didnt want to cut down the trees so they let the tree growth through the porch and into the roof. It had to be unfortunately taken out in later years. Lets take a look inside and see these relaxing, beautiful spaces that she created. Often. Vers came one thing that happened, one thing that evolved about the camp is they started to use it as a working retreat as well as a recreational retreat. Hoover would have themed weekends where he would invite people around a certain issue. He liked to isolate them to have intense conversations and not be interrupted. One weekend he invited charles wennberg, the postmaster general, and several other people and they discussed the possibility of airmail. That is something he did a lot. Heres what i wanted to talk about, the window. When we looked at the panel, this is the inside of the panel. Because you wanted to bring the outdoors in, she created these panels. The inspiration for that was tents. She originally wanted canvas tents. This is what they had at first, but there was this incessant flapping and it drove them nuts. They wanted to be able to come more often in chilly months, so they actually enclosed with this german siding, but she loved the idea of tent flaps and created these wouldnt these wooden tent flaps and the windows tilt out. She is bringing the outdoors in. Learn more about president ial retreats this sunday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, 5 00 p. M. Pits effect pacific on American History tv. Meeting at the summit, the most momentous International Conference of the international postwar era through the eyes of the world for the capital of geneva. In the gleaming palace of nations, the big four, america, england, france, and russia, met to seek an end to a decade of cold war. Heading the soviet delegation