The Museum of Natural and Cultural History has been closed to the public since March, but staff have been working to protect artifacts and provide remote resources for students, teachers and community members behind the scenes.

Alongside its exhibitions usually available to the public, the MNCH, located on the University of Oregon’s Eugene campus, offers outreach programs throughout Oregon, provides informational content online and houses research programs in archaeology and paleontology, according to its website. 

The museum’s work hasn’t halted since their doors closed to the public. Staff have been working on offering remote events and programs via the museum’s Museum from Home resources, and even transforming physical exhibitions into virtual ones. Most staff are working partially remotely and partially on site in staggered shifts to follow social distancing guidelines, Ann Craig, director of exhibitions and public programs said. 

“We’ve been actually super busy behind the scenes and making sure we could get things to people who need it in a variety of forms,” Craig said.

Initially during its closure, the museum offered a series of curated,hands-on children’s activities online, including games, videos and instructions for crafts using materials families might already have at home. The inspiration to create these came with the realization that keeping kids engaged during distance learning put a lot of pressure on parents, Craig said. The museum produced these activities in both English and Spanish to be more accessible to the community.

“That inspired us to take it even further and to make things available that were completely offline, because of course the next thing that happened was realizing that not everybody has broadband, not everybody has that kind of internet access,” Craig said. “And, even if you do, that isn’t necessarily the best way for all youth to learn.”

The MNCH just finished creating 3,000 individual activity kits to be distributed to 50 libraries across Oregon, Craig said. The outreach program, “Engineer It! Exploring Ancient Technologies,” includes a video component and take-home kits with engineering challenges for families, according to the MNCH website. Some kits have already been sent out, Craig said, and the museum keeps getting requests for more.

Beyond programming and activities for children, the museum used virtual platforms to recreate in-person adult and community programs. Evening talks, usually held at the museum, and Ideas on Tap, usually held at Viking Braggot Company in Eugene, were both offered virtually, according to the  MNCH website.

“Not only were we able to serve the people who were kind of counting on attending those programs,” Craig said, “but we also got people from all over the country who never would’ve attended that program, but who were able to attend virtually.”

The museum’s work goes beyond what’s visible to the public. The MNCH’s archaeology research division are considered essential workers and never paused their work when the museum closed, Craig said.

“If anything we are much more busy,” Craig said, “and part of it is fulfilling our duty to protect cultural sites — those haven’t gone away because of a pandemic — and to protect and preserve the objects that are in our care.”.

The MNCH houses Oregon’s most active archaeological research program, according to its website. Researchers lead surveys and excavations within Oregon and the Pacific Northwest and work closely with the Oregon Department of Transportation and other public and private organizations to preserve Oregon’s cultural sites and heritage, according to the website.

Staff within the museum are also working to upkeep the artifacts in their care, Craig said. Temperature and humidity are among the factors that must be monitored and controlled for almost everything held at the museum. Perhaps the most fragile, Craig said, are artifacts made from plants, like the museum’s 10,000-year-old sandals from Oregon’s Northern Great Basin. 

Having exhibits stuck behind closed doors is frustrating, Craig said, but museum staff is working to make the exhibits available virtually starting this summer.

“Most painfully, we have this incredible exhibit called Racing to Change: Oregon’s Civil Rights Years, and it’s very specific to Eugene and Springfield and the history of racism at the University of Oregon,” Craig said. “And that is currently trapped behind our locked doors and more than ever we feel like we want to make this exhibit available to people right now.”

The MNCH and the Oregon Black Pioneers, a non-profit organization focused on teaching about African American contributions to Oregon’s history, co-developed Racing for Change. The exhibit discusses racism in Oregon, Oregon’s civil rights movement and the efforts of Oregon’s Black communities, according to the MNCH webpage.

“I feel like a lot of people in the last few weeks have said, ‘Oh wow, there is a history of racism in Eugene, Springfield, in Oregon, at the University of Oregon,’” Craig said. “But for us, we’ve been submerged in that for quite some time and had a wonderful schedule of programs, exhibits, events that are really going to shed light on this. For some people that feels confrontational and for others it feels long, long overdue.”

The MNCH sells a shirt with the phrase, “Museums are not neutral.” To Craig, that means that museums do not make up facts, but present them and create a place for dialogue.

“These are not new facts, they’re not discoveries, we think of them as ways to illuminate what many people already know and live,” Craig said.

Alongside recent anti-racist movements across the U.S., protesters have taken down statues of individuals with racist backgrounds, with some calling for them to be moved into museums to learn from, rather than celebrated. 

Related: “Protesters tear down pioneer statues after Deady Hall Protest”

On June 13, protesters on the UO campus tore down the long-controversial Pioneer and Pioneer Mother statues. UO President Michael Schill said that the statues would remain in storage until the university decided what to do with them.

The conversation of taking down statues, Craig said, has been happening in the field for a long time, but these decisions aren’t just up to museums. She said that she would go to the communities who want to see statues removed from their places of “celebration and prominence” and ask what they think is appropriate.

“These things can’t be done individually or decided individually,” she said. “it has to be a community response,” Craig said.