Border Cantos Exhibition
Border Cantos: Sights and Sounds from the Mexican-American Border was a unique collaboration between American photographer Richard Misrach and Mexican American sculptor/composer Guillermo Galindo, using the power of art to explore and humanize the complex issues surrounding the United States-Mexico border.
Misrach, who has photographed the border since 2004, documents landscapes and objects, including things left behind by migrants. Responding to these photographs, Galindo fashioned sound-generating sculptures from items Misrach collected along the border; the sounds they produce give voices to people through the personal belongings they have left behind.
This exhibition was Crystal Bridges’ second implementation of a bilingual experience. During this period, the institution was exploring a bilingual strategy and used this exhibition as an opportunity to grow our community connections. We formed a core group through resources from our Education department, and held several feedback sessions to hear directly from the local community.
The bilingual strategy was built from the findings, where we learned that though a higher percentage of Spanish-speakers were dual-language, they didn’t feel welcome in the museum space—and that only increased with the older Spanish-speaking demographic. Providing interpretation in Spanish created a feeling of inclusion, along with serving a direct language need for those to whom it was a barrier.
We also tested design prototypes, knowing that the interpretation format would need to change in order to keep the galleries easily navigable with a continued focus on the art, and not fill the wall with text which could become intimidating. For Border Cantos, we had the space to align the languages side by side, at the same height. This was the preference, to denote equality. For this exhibition in particular, the text was designed to mimic the Mexican-American border, divided by a river that ebbs and flows.
Front-end evaluation focus groups were also held, as a result some object placement and sight lines were impacted. Where topics were seen by the community to be more challenging, such as photographs of border patrol shooting ranges, Jessi revised the exhibition layout to have this imagery in a more secluded area that visitors could easily bypass if needed.
The exhibition itself presented an opportunity to engage further with our broader community. To connect the subject of the exhibition, the Mexican-American border, with more communities, we created a wall with a map of the globe, overlaid with a hexagon pattern. We produced custom hexagon post-it notes and encouraged visitors to “Share Your Migration Story.” A hexagon was used because we are all connected in more ways, so each story fit with all the others surrounding it, uniting the many into one.
Check out more imagery from the exhibition here. We also created an extensive bilingual takeaway gallery guide, so guests could further explore this complex topic as they had time, shown below.
