"The Art of Grieving" Exhibition Featuring the National COVID Memorial at Harvard's Countway Library

From October 30 through December 13, 2024, Harvard Medical School's Countway Library hosted "The Art of Grieving," an exhibition featuring Marked by COVID, the National COVID Memorial, and works from the Creativity in the Time of COVID-19 research collective, a Mellon Foundation-supported initiative centered at Michigan State University. The show was the culminating exhibition in a nationwide tour that traveled to Buffalo, New York; the US Air Force Academy in Colorado; St. Louis; Detroit; Lansing; Phoenix; Chicago; and Seoul, South Korea. The Countway installation featured creative works inspired by collective grief during the pandemic, including a sculpture made of surgical masks and a needlework series depicting highway sign slogans from the early days of shelter-in-place orders.

The exhibition launched with public events on November 1–2, 2024, including a catered opening reception, talks by international specialists on topics like grief in the digital era and the loneliness epidemic, and interactive creative writing and drawing workshops. The partnership with Countway Library was facilitated through Marked by COVID's connection with BU associate professor Andrew Stokes. Read the full announcement at Graphic Medicine.