Honoraria
Translation
Hudson River Museum
Yonkers, NY
At the Fiesta de Frida celebration, visitors had the chance to walk the Hudson River Museum’s outdoor grounds, picnic together, and enjoy food from a variety of local Mexican restaurants. Bilingual copies of recipes and free samples of dishes from Rivera’s cookbook were offered at different restaurant stations. A Spanish-speaking DJ played music throughout the event, and docents offered exhibition tours. Finally, each food sample ticket entered visitors into a raffle, and four winners received gift cards from the participating restaurants.
Through this program, the Hudson River Museum aspired to use food as an easy entry point to attract more of its local Hispanic and Latinx community members and foster a deeper understanding of Mexican culture for all visitors. The museum hoped to have 100 festival attendees.
The Hudson River Museum welcomed 293 people to the festival. Staff attributed the large turnout to it being a free outdoor event and to the fact that participating local businesses attracted their own current and prospective customers, using their own marketing efforts. Overall, this program saw a mix of museum members and first-time visitors, including a significant number of teens and local Spanish-speaking families.
What are other creative forms of making besides visual artmaking? By engaging the nonvisual senses of taste and music and collaborating with local restaurants, the Hudson River Museum created a celebratory community event that highlighted a lesser-known component of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera’s lives. For this program and other events developed for this exhibition, the museum hosted a mix of outdoor and in-gallery programs and learned that activating outdoor spaces can allow for more flexibility in potential programming.
The University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) collaborated with local interdisciplinary performance artist Supercoolwicked to provide a free interpretative performance that successfully engaged local students and Black individuals with art and blended performance and storytelling to explore themes of healing, self-reflection, and ancestral veneration.
For the first time, the Upcountry History Museum offered in-house translation services relating to its exhibition content and educational materials.
The "Mexican American Culinary Experience" used food and storytelling to engage older adults and community members in cultural exploration at the Mattatuck Museum.
The University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) collaborated with local interdisciplinary performance artist Supercoolwicked to provide a free interpretative performance that successfully engaged local students and Black individuals with art and blended performance and storytelling to explore themes of healing, self-reflection, and ancestral veneration.
For the first time, the Upcountry History Museum offered in-house translation services relating to its exhibition content and educational materials.
The "Mexican American Culinary Experience" used food and storytelling to engage older adults and community members in cultural exploration at the Mattatuck Museum.
