History Colorado - Week Two

Hi everyone,
It's been great to see all that you guys did last week!
This week I've been working on a lot of the same projects as last week: editing the La Gente online exhibit, finding a new home for El Movimiento and the updating the Japanese-American grandmother trunk.

This week I got to research early Hispanic Coloradans for our online exhibit La Gente, it was amazing to see what these Latinos did in the 1800s and an honor to be able to tell their stories. As part of this project I was able to go to the museum's research center to find pictures of these early Coloradans such as Estefana Bent Hicklin, Josefa Jaramillo Carson and Ignacia Jaramillo Bent. The Jaramillo sisters, most notably, escaped the house of New Mexico Governor Charles Bent through a whole in the wall during the Taos revolt in 1847, during which Governor Bent was killed.


I've also spent a lot of time this week researching Japanese-American internment at Amache this week for the grandmother trunks.






This week I took Dr. Sierra-Sastre's advice to always say yes, which led me to meeting Carlos Fresquez, a Denver artist at the Denver Art Museum where he talked to me and another intern about his installation Temple of the Ancient Future. It was truly inspiring to hear his take on the Latino community in Denver. So much of what he said resonated with me and reminded me of the conversations we had in Washington about bringing Latino culture into our institutions not just a relics but as part of the modern experience. If you can see them in the pictures, part of the installation involves asking museum patrons to leave their hopes and dreams written inside the temple.

I also has another "say yes" moment and met with one of the researchers behind and exhibit on early Colorado photography which was very informative and interesting.


The last thing I did this week was to continue scouring the museum to find a new home for the El Movimiento exhibit upstairs. Last week the committee decided that they wanted to make El Movimiento into a core exhibit in the museum, which means that it needs to find a new home before the art museum takes over its current location in January. This led me to the Sand Creek Gallery a space currently being used as storage that can't be used for anything else. I really enjoyed the sign letting me know that the exhibit was closed even though I had to locate the key to get in. As part of this rehousing project,  I ran around the museum with a measuring tape scouting out new locations and sketching ideas for El Movimento's new home. It's a good thing that we did a little bit of exhibit design in Washington, or I would have been hopeless!

I thought you guys might enjoy this throwback picture I found of Eduardo at El Movimiento's opening...

(History Colorado)

Ilse Maria Meiler