When the world went into lockdown in the face of COVID-19 and while adapting to social distancing, zoom, and masks required, many, in their isolation, turned to art and creative expression as a way to cope with the stress, grief, loneliness, and loss brought on by the pandemic.

This artistic exploration, born from confinement and fueled by emotions of uncertainty and more free time, as well as the stories behind many quarantine-created works are the focus of “Creativity in the Time of COVID-19: Art as Medicine,” a four-year project that began in January 2021 at Michigan State University’s College of Arts and Letters with support from a $3 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The project explores the role creativity played in helping people cope with and respond to the unprecedented events of COVID-19 while highlighting the power of art to heal, to overcome, to connect, to inspire, and to advocate for change in the face of a global pandemic.

Now in its final year, the “Creativity in the Time of COVID-19” project has amassed more than 2,000 pieces of art from all around the world showing all the diverse ways people, from all walks of life, turned to creativity during the pandemic. This artwork can now be viewed online in a global digital archive, and some of the pieces are now on display at Michigan State University in exhibitions at the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities LookOut Gallery through Monday, Oct. 14, and at (SCENE) Metrospace through Friday, Oct. 11.

The “Creativity in the Time of COVID-19: Art as Medicine” project is led by Natalie Phillips, associate professor in the Department of English and founder and co-director of the Digital Humanities and Literary Cognition Lab at Michigan State University, Julian Chambliss, professor in the Department of English and the Val Berryman Curator of History at the MSU Museum, and the entire team at the Digital Humanities and Literary Cognition Lab, which includes Soohyun Cho, who was a postdoctoral research associate on the project and now is an assistant professor in the Center for Integrative Studies in the Arts and Humanities, and Tedda Hughes, who graduated from MSU with a Doctorate of Law and serves as the Project Manager for the “Creativity in the Time of COVID-19” project.