National Museum of the American Latino - Camila - Week 2

On Monday, I worked on my project outline for the Smithsonian Adventure Lab scavenger hunt. I researched possible locations and possible objects. I also began to imagine the most efficient order in which to put the stops, which helped me in selecting some locations.

On Tuesday I helped facilitate a 9 am tour at the Molina Family Gallery. This was another 4-H tour of about 50 people. They were very attentive during the tour despite being such a large group, and we had some interesting discussions during the activity time. We discussed the terms “Latino, Latinx, Hispanic, Chicano” etc. and the presence of Asian ancestry in the Latino community. 

From 10 am to 4:30 pm, I spent time in the General Motors Learning Lounge replacing the table covers, setting up some additional activities, and general housekeeping like picking up fallen post-it notes and adjusting the book shelves. We had a lot of visitors coming in throughout the day to play dominos, play with the stuffed groceries toy, and even look at some books! The dominos are really popular and I enjoyed showing people how to play! This group of CHCI cohort students came in (they are a year younger and they do their own version of “Washington Week”). They were super nice and they agreed to snap a picture for the blog. At around 2 pm, some volunteers came in and I enjoyed getting to know them and their connection to the National Museum of the American Latino. 

Wednesday I arrived at the NMAL offices at Capital Gallery and spent a lot of time working on my project outline. Looking at the actual app that will host the scavenger hunt that I downloaded on my phone was helpful in seeing it all come together. My project is research heavy so I learned a lot about American Latinos and their contributions! For example, did you know the University of California, Los Angeles was founded from the work of a Mexican-American? Reginaldo F.  Del Valle was born in 1854, four years after California became part of the United States. In the legislature, he petitioned to found the Branch State Normal School at Los Angeles which was later the basis for UCLA. At 2 pm, I had a meeting with Emily, where she answered my questions about accessibility to certain museums with reserved timed-tickets.

Thursday was another Molina Family Gallery day (yay!) I did the routine morning things like setting up the tables and activities. 

On Friday, I did virtual work with the scavenger hunt project, finalizing the locations and beginning to search for possible objects in those locations/museums that fit the story that NMAL and the Smithsonian is telling for this year’s Hispanic Heritage Month. Overall, working on the details for each of the 9 locations I am researching and selecting.

Onto next week!