Samenvatting

On 8 and 9 October 2020, the Reinwardt Academy hosted the digital conference Ethnology Lab on the Workings of Covid-19 on Museums. The programme was geared to address the challenges faced by museums and cultural heritage institutions in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. 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.

Future approaches to heritage-making can benefit by the ethnological and social anthropological reflections gathered by different stakeholders as they undergo the present pandemic. Based on actual observations in their respective organisations, participants weighed in the impact of museological and ethnological considerations. 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, organised in four different themes: collecting during crises, practical challenges, academic reflections and policy reflections.