The New Face of Arts Leadership in the West - westaf - The Western ...

cally sound enough. Their language is sound
enough—they are brown enough. I don’t want
any other child to have to go through that.
In my work at the history museum, we deal
a lot with arts, and we tend to deal a lot
with language. We definitely tend to deal
with ethnicity. What I am trying to do is use
history to open up the doors to find identity.
Through history, I believe we can find a sense
of culture—a sense of self—so that when
an individual is comfortable, secure, and
confident, that becomes a bed of soil from
which leadership can grow. That is how we
are dealing with things. We had a difficult time
developing programs because I thought, “OK,
I am going to start putting together these great
programs for children and families, and they
are going to come and we are going to learn
and be this great community and it’s going to
be wonderful.” So, at 12:00 noon, there I am
with all my stuff, ready to do a program, and
nobody showed up. So, what we decided to
do, and I think it has worked and I think other
people have used it as a model, is to take community-based
organizations that are already
successful and invite their participants into our
programs. They are free to the public. They
are diverse in their content and their format,
and we are trying to reach different age groups
and really trying to reach families. We are
doing this successfully through the children. We
invite the children first. When they experience
something with us, we treat them as though they
are equals. We work with them as individuals
who can think for themselves, can identify with
what is around them, and call it their own. We
also observe them getting excited about the
experience and find they want to come back
with their parents. So, that is how we have
reached out. That is the model we are using.
There are a couple of bumps in the road. These
have been touched on lightly—but I don’t think
mentioned directly—upper administration usually
does not represent the public as a whole. As a
result, when there are one or two of us people of
color in upper administration, we are sometimes
put in a position of making decisions for an
entire group that maybe we don’t represent.
Because I am a younger Hispanic female, I may
not be sensitive to the needs of older Hispanic
females. Because I am female, am I really
reaching out and expressing or presenting and
allowing for Hispanic men to feel welcome in
our institution? I find this very difficult. So, what
I have chosen to do is go to other minority
groups, not just Hispanic, and ask them to give
me feedback so that I don’t have to trust only
myself. I trust what I have asked of other people.
Another problem has been people saying, “Well,
if we have never been represented before,
why should we give you a chance?” And
my response is that 80% of success is showing
up. If you want to own it, if you want it to be
yours, if you want some representation for
yourself, you need to show up. Maybe you
won’t like it the first time, maybe you won’t like
it the second time, but it is there and it is yours
and it will be there as long as you show up.
We touched on language earlier today, and I
think it is a very important thing to talk about.
We have been talking about American society,
and because the museum where I work is a state
institution, there is a great deal of controversy
as to whether or not using Spanish—we have
both official languages in New Mexico—will
put off people who don’t speak Spanish. There
are also people who may be Hispanic but
don’t speak Spanish and feel awkward about
that. Still other people understand Spanish
well but feel uncomfortable speaking it. As a
result, I find it is kind of touchy as to whether or
not language should be involved as a primary
distinguishing element in an organization’s
interface with the community. I think if it is done
in a very familiar way with art institutions, cultural
institutions, history institutions, if it is done in a
non-threatening—maybe even nontraditional
way—museums tend to use Spanish in their
texts, or they will produce an English text and
a Spanish text. What we are doing is putting it
more into the programs instead of just visibly
out there. We produce dual museum guides,
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