“As a historian, you’re always thinking about what’s missing, of what you want to know more about,” Ms. Hagstrup said. “I think what people will want to know about this crazy time is what everyday life was like, what it was like to live through.”

When it is no longer a health risk to gather objects for its collection, the Vesthimmerlands Museum hopes to secure some of those, too. Curators at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London are also thinking about acquiring such items. In 2014, the museum, which focuses on applied art and design, opened a gallery devoted to “rapid response collecting” — a term it coined for the acquisition of objects that “articulate major moments in our contemporary history,” according to Corinna Gardner, a senior curator.

Ms. Gardner, who is in charge of the rapid response collection, played a decisive role in selecting items such as a “pussyhat” (the bright pink caps worn during the 2017 Women’s March), various objects bearing the Extinction Rebellion logo, and a set of Katy Perry-brand false eyelashes, chosen as an artifact of global consumer culture.

Ms. Gardner said she was already thinking about objects that articulated something interesting about the pandemic. She was intrigued by a device that can be attached to a door handle for hands-free opening, created by the architectural designers Ivo Tedbury and Freddie Hong and available online for 3-D printing, she said.

In the United States, the National Museum of African American History and Culture has collected artifacts from events like the protests over the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and the days of racial strife in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017.

In Manhattan, the New-York Historical Society, has sent out its “history brigades” to events like Occupy Wall Street, while in Orlando, Fla., the Orange County Regional History Center hurried to collect items to record the tragedy of the Pulse nightclub shooting. The center is now collecting artifacts from the current crisis: photographs of empty store shelves, cancellation emails and social media posts discussing the impact of the virus.