Art museum exhibit features voices of Spanish-speaking Marquette students
Led by Dr. Eugenia Afinoguénova, a team of students and faculty helped shape ‘Americans in Spain: Painting and Travel, 1820–1920’
By Jill Nuelle, communication intern in the Office of Marketing and Communication
On exhibit now at the Milwaukee Art Museum is Americans in Spain: Painting and Travel, 1820–1920, a unique collaboration between the museum and Spanish-speaking faculty researchers and students from Marquette University.
The exhibit features more than 100 paintings, photographs and prints from 50 lenders across the world, from Europe’s most famous museums to private collectors, organized to emphasize Spain’s influence on the United States art world.
The exhibition features a smartphone app with an audio guide, designed to replace an in-person tour guide during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The app has audio tracks in both English and Spanish. The Spanish tracks were voiced by students in Marquette’s Spanish for Heritage Learners program, as well as faculty.
The app was created by Shiyu Tian, who is currently pursuing his doctorate in computer science, with help from Dr. Eugenia Afinoguénova, professor of Spanish and chair of the Languages, Literatures and Cultures Department in the Klingler College of Arts and Science, and the museum’s team.
It is the first major exhibition to focus on the influence of Spanish art and culture on American painting.
One student who can be heard in the audio guide is Mariah Olmo-Santiago, a sophomore majoring in social welfare and justice. She says the opportunity to lend her voice to an exhibit with such strong Hispanic roots was an incredibly meaningful experience.
“I’ve been going to the art museum for field trips since I was a kid, so just thinking about other people being able to hear my voice in the exhibit, it’s like, ‘Wow, I don’t even know what to say,’” Olmo-Santiago says. “Having the language being spoken by people like me, it really enhances that aspect of getting to know other people’s cultures.”
In addition to the exhibit’s smartphone app, Afinoguénova’s team developed a digital online exhibit.
Designed by Tim Korolev, a senior majoring in English and computer science, the Artist-Traveler’s Project allows armchair travelers to zoom in, explore historical maps and the landscapes representing Spain’s locations, and compare these landscapes with other representations.
Like the exhibition app, this digital project was funded by the Explorer Challenge Grant.
Afinoguénova says the Artist-Traveler’s Project and how it is used as an interactive companion to the museum exhibit ultimately added a public-facing dimension to her own research on the Spanish Travelers Project. The Spanish Travelers Project, developed by Marquette in collaboration with the Marquette Visualization Lab in the Opus College of Engineering and the American Geographical Society Library at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is a database and a forthcoming 3D visualization of 19th-century travelogues about Spain.
“The exhibit includes the kind of artistic and academic facets that innovative education needs,” Afinoguénova says.
The inclusion of Spanish speakers in the audio guide, instead of providing only English commentary, holds great significance for all involved in the creation of the exhibit.
Both Afinoguénova and Brandon Ruud, Abert Family Curator of American Art at the Milwaukee Art Museum and the exhibition co-curator, note that since the exhibition focuses on Spain, they could have easily chosen to have the Castilian dialect spoken in the audio guide. However, they emphasize the importance of coding the language for a broader Spanish speaking audience by using different varieties of Spanish spoken in Milwaukee and on Marquette’s campus, specifically.
Speakers from Spain, as well as those who are first-generation and studying Spanish, and those from Puerto Rico, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic and various other Spanish-speaking countries were able to share their voices for the exhibit.
“I really love these collaborations that are local and involve students and faculty at a university like Marquette that has such great resources,” Ruud says. “It’s just been an incredible experience.”
Ruud says the exhibition has been met with overwhelming support. Visitors seem to enjoy being introduced to new topics and shared excitement about being welcomed back to the museum with an exhibit of this caliber.
The week is the final week to see the exhibition, which closes Oct. 3. The exhibition was a collaboration with the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, where it was showcased earlier this year.
