From Conference to Conference... to Conferencia! - Part 3 (Final)

Back to "Garnet and Gold" territory, I got involved in the virtual component of the 2nd International Conference "Museums in Education: From Action to Reflection" organized by the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid, Spain. I've been participating at this conference with a video presentation called "Mixing It Up: Building an Educational Identity for an Art Exhibition" which you can watch above. I intended for this presentation to be an introduction to my dissertation research work and it is basically a summary of the introductory part of my dissertation in which I aim to get to a better understanding of the supported interpretation model (formerly called guided interaction - see this article for more information!), and the way it was implemented at the Mixing It Up art exhibition. As part of the virtual component to this conference, I intended to stimulate discussion about supported interpretation, and I have been really pleased with the interesting conversations and reflections that the video has sparked. Even though all presentations were oriented to an audience of museum professionals and educators, the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum has made them all available online through YouTube, which makes them accessible to a broader range of audiences, even after the conference is finished. So far, it has been fantastic. I've been able to watch a variety of presentations online and interact with the authors as well as in the four conference forums under the themes of Formats, Research, Inside/Outside, and Connections. I'm looking forward to meeting more museum professionals and learning more about what they are doing at their institutions. Thanks, Thyssen-Bornemisza!

From Conference to Conference... to Conferencia! - Part 2

Love Purple, Live Gold? Just temporarily!... I replaced "garnet" with "purple" for a couple of days about two weeks ago, when I went to Baton Rouge, LA to present at the 40th Conference on Social Theory, Politics & the Arts. This was my first Arts Administration conference, so it was a totally new experience for me. It was also my first time visiting Louisiana, which also made it all more exciting. 

With the theme "Our Countries, Our Cultures: Policies, Practices, Perspectives," the 2012 STP&A conference was held at the Louisiana State University's Cook Hotel and Conference Center from October 18-20. My presentation was entitled "Embracing Diversity from Within: Hispanic/Latinos and their Roles in Florida Art Museums" and it was meant to stimulate reflection on the need of promoting diversity in the workplace. During this presentation, I shared the results of a survey of Florida art museums addressing the involvement of Hispanic/Latinos as paid and unpaid staff members. My study uses this specific ethnic group, which is very predominant and rapidly growing in the state of Florida, but I actually intended it as an invitation for museum professionals to consider the importance of having a diverse staff that actually reflects the audience their institutions serve, in order to be able to better satisfy the needs of their local communities and stay relevant as organizations. My survey was inspired by a similar, but more comprehensive study conducted in the 90's, mentioned by Martha Gutiérrez-Steinkamp in her chapter from the book "Latinos in Museums: A Heritage Reclaimed."

I presented on Friday 19th, as part of a session called "Cultural Diversity and the Value of 'Otherness'" with a diverse group of presenters attending from Canada, Australia and South Africa. It was a great experience. The entire conference was, since I was able to attend very interesting sessions and meet a variety of professionals coming from all kinds of places in the U.S. and abroad.

As a bonus, I got to visit New Orleans! See above a picture of Bourbon Street in the historic French Quarter (courtesy of Mairelys - Thanks!), and a Japan Fest 2012 celebration outside the New Orleans Museum of Art below!

What next? See Part 3 coming soon...

From Conference to Conference... to Conferencia! - Part 1

A lot going on recently! Where have I been? Well, from conference to conference... to conferencia! This seems to be the year of conferences for me, and it has been exciting and exhausting at the same time. This second half of the year started for me with the annual Florida Association of Museums conference, which happened to be in town this time. It was great to have been able to participate and present again this year. Even though I wasn't able to attend the conference everyday, I participated in some very interesting and informative sessions, meetings and social gathering activities. It was great to connect again with people I hadn't seen in a while, and also meet many new colleagues who I am now looking forward to seeing again next year. 

As I mentioned in my previous post, the theme of the conference this year was "Changing Perceptions." The panel session I pulled together, which I talked about also in my previous post, got very positive responses from attendees who seemed to have appreciated the information that we shared with them, coming up with some interesting questions for the presenters. Our session was held at the beautiful ALoft Tallahassee Downtown hotel (see picture above) in a conference room similar to the one in the picture below. However, and more importantly, the session panelists were just wonderful! They are just a pleasure to work with so I truly consider myself very fortunate to have been able to get them all on board! 

Since the session was about Hispanic audiences, I wanted to make sure that we had a diverse group of presenters and I was happy to be able to accomplish that task. FSU professor Pat Villeneuve (my major professor and advisor) opened the session sharing insights about the Mixing It Up: Building an Identity art exhibition, which she recently curated together with ASU professor Mary Erickson and a diverse curatorial team at the Tempe Center for the Arts, near the city of Phoenix, AZ. Pat shared details about the curatorial model behind the exhibition, and I then introduced attendees to the evaluation and research of it that I'm currently conducting for my doctoral dissertation. Next, bilingual interpretation specialist, Carlos Plaza, provided all participants with information regarding The Bilingual Exhibits Research Initiative (BERI) that he has been part of recently, and shared valuable guidelines for museum professionals interested in developing bilingual exhibitions (see one of Carlos' recent articles on the topic here). The next presenter was Jorge Zamanillo, Vice President for Expansion Projects at HistoryMiami. Jorge shared insights about some of the most recent exhibitions and programs at HistoryMiami, including the exhibition entitled The Guayabera: A Shirt's Story (see the online version of it here) and stressed their current initiatives to reach Hispanic populations in South Florida. FSU professor Felipe Korzenny presented last, sharing his experiences in the field of Hispanic Marketing Communication, and offering examples on how to connect with Hispanic consumers.

After what I've shared above, I think there is no need for me to say again how pleased I am with the way our session turned out. It's really not much of a surprise since such a wonderful combination of people in one panel couldn't deliver anything less than great! I'd like to thank them all again for participating and I truly look forward to finding ways to collaborate again in the future!

So, what came after this? Stay tuned for Part 2!