University of Denver Digital Commons @ DU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate Studies 1-1-2017 The Dynamics of Community Museums and Their Communities: Museo de las Americas' Spanish Happy Hour Fostering Social Inclusion for the Latino and Denver Metro Area Communities Maritza Hernandez-Bravo University of Denver Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd Part of the Anthropology Commons, and the Museum Studies Commons Recommended Citation Hernandez-Bravo, Maritza, "The Dynamics of Community Museums and Their Communities: Museo de las Americas' Spanish Happy Hour Fostering Social Inclusion for the Latino and Denver Metro Area Communities" (2017). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1282. https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/1282 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies at Digital Commons @ DU. 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The Dynamics of Community Museums and Their Communities: Museo de las Americas’ Spanish Happy Hour Fostering Social Inclusion for the Latino and Denver Metro Area Communities A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of Social Sciences University of Denver In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts by Maritza Hernandez-Bravo June 2017 Advisor: Richard Clemmer-Smith ©Copyright by Maritza Hernandez-Bravo 2017 All Rights Reserved Author: Maritza Hernandez-Bravo Title: The Dynamics of Community Museums and Their Communities: Museo de las Americas’ Spanish Happy Hour Fostering Social Inclusion for the Latino and Denver Metro Area Communities Advisor: Richard Clemmer-Smith Degree Date: June 2017 Abstract Many museums are now aspiring to collaborate and engage with Latino communities and the community as a whole. Due to Museo de las Americas status as a community museum, I predicted that I would find a collaborative effort already occurring between the institution and their community, which can aid in creating a sense of social inclusion by being committed to including diverse voices by having clarity of purpose that makes sense both within the context of the community and the institution itself. I used staff, volunteer and visitor interviews and observations of the program to evaluate the degree of collaboration and the experiences of the visitors, specifically Latinos. I discover the essential factors to genuinely engage community is through building internal capacity to create a community centered mindset and conclude with recommendations for how museums can approach community collaboration and engagement to have a significant social impact. ii Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………ii Chapter 1: Collaboration and Engagement Through the Communities’ Eyes….................1 Questions………………………………………………………………………….5 Museo de las Americas as an Institution………………………………………….6 Observation/Participant observation………………………………………6 Interviews………………………………………………………………….7 Mission Statement and Strategic Plan………………………..……………8 Museo’s Visitors and Volunteers………………………………………………….9 Participant/ Observation…………………………………………………...9 Interviews………………………………………………………...………10 Supplementary Texts…………………………………………….............11 Discourse Analysis…………………………………………………….....12 Chapter 2: Background/Literature Review………………………………………………13 The Growing Latino Audience…………………………………………………..13 Museums and Their Communities…………………………………………...…..16 Ethnically Specific/ Community-Focused Museums…………………………… 18 Museums and Latino Communities: Case Studies……………………………….19 The Mexican Museum……………………………………………. …….22 National Museum of Mexican Art…………………………………….…24 Nassau County Museum of Art…………………………………………..26 Denver Art Museum…………………………………………….…….…27 Denver’s Latino Community………………………………………….…………28 Museo de las Americas…………………………………………………….…….31 Chapter 3: Theoretical Framework………………………………………………………36 Critical Museum Theory…………………………………………………………36 Constructivist Learning Theory …………………………………………………38 Collaboration Continuum…………………………………………………….…..40 Third Space: Providing Social Inclusion to Foster Identity………………..….…42 Multiple Layers of Identity………………………………………………………43 The Latino Identity in the U.S. ……………………………….…………………45 Chapter 4: Data Analysis……………………………………………………………..… 50 Museo de las Americas: An Agent of Social Change………………………..…. 51 Museo de las Americas’ Culture…………………………………………..…… 53 Self Identity at Museo de Las Americas…………………………………53 Museo de las Americas Values…………………………………………..54 Museo’s Goals: Social Inclusion to Foster Identity………………...……57 Defining Community…………………………………………………………….59 Evaluating Community Collaboration and Engagement……………………….. 63 iii Community Perspective on Spanish Happy Hour/ConnectArte…………………65 The Creation and Evolution of Spanish Happy Hour……………………………65 Development of ConnectArte……………………………………………68 Volunteer Participation………………………………………………………..…72 Motives for Volunteering……………………………………………..…72 Program Experience……………………………………………...………75 Melissa’s Relationship to Museo…………………………...……………79 Visitor Participation…………………………………………………………..… 81 Motives for Attending……………………………………………………82 Program Experience……………………………………………………...85 Visitors Relationship to Museo………………………………………..…88 Chapter 5: Conclusion……………………………………………………………………91 The Realities of Community Collaboration and Engagement………………..… 91 References………………………………………………………………………………103 iv Chapter 1: Collaboration and Engagement Through the Communities’ Eyes The demographics in the United States are more diverse than ever and will continue to become more diverse with the Latino population becoming the majority- minority within the next 30 years. Today many museums aspire to be socially inclusive and have a social impact by democratizing their practices and being committed to connecting with these marginalized communities. Community collaboration and engagement are huge cultural shifts that museums are now attempting to make when embracing critical museum theory to try to connect with not only marginalized communities, but also a dynamic larger community. What does this look like? How does an historically elite institution strive to step back from it’s authoritative stance and become partners with its’ community, especially an underrepresented community? How can museums genuinely engage their community? What tools can museums use to determine the degree of collaboration actually achieved during the project? To explore these larger themes, this research focuses on a case study of the evaluation Museo de las Americas’ Spanish Happy Hour/ConnectArte program. This research will use how Museo defines their culture and community as a baseline to evaluate if their program, Spanish Happy Hour/ConnectArte, truly embodies a collaborative effort and serves a larger social responsibility tied to expanding and fostering identity for both the Latino community and the Denver Metro Area community they are attempting to serve. I chose Museo because it is a community museum focused 1 on Latin American art and I decided to focus on Spanish Happy Hour because it was a unique program due to its Spanish speaking emphases and social aspects. Due to Museo’s status as a community museum, I predicted that I would find a collaborative effort already occurring between the institution and their community, which can aid in creating a sense of social inclusion by being committed to including diverse voices by having clarity of purpose that makes sense both within the context of the community and the institution itself. These characteristics will aid in my evaluation of collaboration, community engagement, social inclusion and identity. To aid in the evaluation process, a visitor-focused approach is used to obtain a holistic and critical view of the program from those it is intended for. My research is visitor-focused and investigates if and how Museo is engaging and collaborating with the community they aim to serve by focusing on their monthly program Spanish Happy Hour program that has evolved into ConnectArte. Using a culturally responsive visitor studies paradigm, I evaluated Museo’s collaboration and engagement efforts by using a framework characterizing collaborative efforts in archaeological practice that has been adapted for this research. Thus, I find an evaluation framework utilizing a culturally responsive visitor studies paradigm and getting an emic perspective on the culture of Museo as an institution, to be useful not only in taking a critical view of Museo’s community collaboration and engagement, but also for conducting anthropological research (Betancourt and Salazar 2014: 184). An evaluation can be anthropological by using a culturally responsive paradigm to view the visitor and Museo staff as holistically and as complex as possible and how that affects their museum experience (Betancourt and Salazar 2014: 185). An evaluation 2 framework is also useful when utilizing a framework for characterizing collaborative efforts in a project, provided by Chip Colwell-Chanthaphonh and T.J. Ferguson. In this framework, collaboration in practice exists on a continuum from “resistance” to “collaboration” with “participation” in between, this is used to evaluate the collaborative efforts of Museo to engage their community and whether or not more effort needs be strategically placed to more effectively develop collaborative and engaging programing. To define these different modes, the authors propose 6 features,