Healing through Remembrance: Memorializing Covid, Five Years and Beyond

City Lore and Naming the Lost Memorials (NTLM) invites the general public to a panel discussion and community conversation to honor the 5th anniversary of the first COVID-19 cases in New York City. Healing through Remembrance: Memorializing Covid, Five Years and Beyond is scheduled for Wednesday, March 5th from 6:30 – 9:00 pm at the City Lore Gallery located at 56 East 1st street. Masks are required.

Since May 2020, soon after the pandemic struck, Naming the Lost Memorials, comprised of a small team of volunteer artists, activists, and folklorists, curated memorial sites in New York City to name and remember victims of the COVID-19 pandemic. From 2023-2025, with support from the Mellon Foundation's Monuments Project and the sponsorship of City Lore, they have worked with 45 community groups and a large team of artists and activists to install memorials at Green-Wood Cemetery and St. Mark’s Church in conjunction with Mano a Mano’s Día de Muertos celebration.

This live event/panel discussion in the City Lore Gallery will also be broadcast on Zoom (link to be provided through Virtual General Admission RSVP)

6:30 pm. HISTORY OF THE NAMING THE LOST MEMORIALS INITIATIVE - Presentation by Megan Paradis Hanley, theater maker, activist, and educator; Jenny Romaine, artist, organizer and educator; Sandra Bell, artist, producer and educator.

6:45 pm. AUTHOR TALK, Presentation by Robert W. Snyder, public historian, journalist, author and educator regarding his latest book, When the City Stopped, Stories from New York’s Essential Workers

In When the City Stopped, Robert Snyder tells the story of COVID-19 in the words of ordinary New Yorkers, illuminating the fear and uncertainty of life in the early weeks and months, as well as the solidarity that sustained the city. The story is told through the words of health care workers, grocery clerks, transit workers, and community activists who recount their experiences in poems, first-person narratives, and interviews. When the City Stopped preserves for future generations what it was like to be in New York when it was at the center of the pandemic.

6:55 pm CONVERSATION WITH NTLM COMMUNITY PARTNERS - Moderated by Kay Turner, artist, scholar and folklorist, this is an opportunity to hear directly from project participants their wisdom and ideas as we explore the use of communal memorials and how best to continue to memorialize COVID moving forward.

8:00 pm OPEN CONVERSATION WITH AUDIENCE – As we commemorate the enormous impact that COVID has had on our city, and the importance of communal memorials, we invite people to share their thoughts and memories. Join us in addressing what we have learned about healing and remembrance, and how we should continue to remember and memorialize the pandemic in years to come.