Anticipating a Covid-19 Memorial Landscape: Quarantine and Migration Heritage as a Template?

Abstract

Abstract:This paper examines the role and function of migration and quarantine heritage in the circulation of health-related stories of national purity and biological vigor (which continue to be enacted and normalized through emerging COVID-19 remembrance practices). After examining how material cultures of quarantine have defined the parameters of the "healthy" nation-state, we outline the role of heritage venues in seeding national stories and symbols of the contemporary pandemic era. What clues do existing heritage sites provide about the form and function of emerging COVID-19 memorial landscapes? What continuities and differences can we identify? What can previous interpretive regimes around disease, movement, identity, and foreignness reveal about the objects and landscapes that will persist as symbols of our current predicament? And what are the implications for the management of museum landscapes?