When student groups protested the lack of Latin American representation at the Chicago History Museum, the museum responded by creating a new temporary exhibit called Aqui en Chicago.
Elena Gonzales, curator of civic engagement and social justice at the Chicago History Museum, will speak about the creation of that exhibit at 7 p.m. Oct. 6 at the Oak Park River Forest Museum.
“A group of high school students from Instituto Justice and Leadership Academy, an alternative high school in Pilsen, visited the history museum back in 2019,” Gonzales related. They saw the 20-year-old Chicago history exhibition, Chicago: Crossroads of America.
“They found that it really included nothing about a third of the city,” Gonzales said. “They spent the rest of their semester protesting this fact and trying to change how the museum was telling history.”
Their protests included letter-writing and talking to local community and museum leaders, Gonzales said. Then the pandemic put the project on hiatus.
“I joined the project in 2021,” Gonzales said. “We started engaging the advisers that the teens had identified, as well as additional advisers.”
She worked with the students to get the exhibit project going.
“The exhibition is meant to be a pronouncement of persistent presence of Latine communities in and around Chicago for the past 170 years,” Gonzales declared. “It is a really diverse collection of stories from across many different areas of working for social justice.”
That includes protests, walkouts and sit-ins, as well as cultural maintenance — visual and performing arts, spiritual practices, food ways and such.
More Top Picks Porter Cable Pcck647
“It’s very colorful and very beautiful,” Gonzales said. “The color palette was specially designed for us by our co-designer, Cecilia Beaven, who’s a local muralist from Mexico City. She also did beautiful murals throughout the space that anchor the visitor’s experience. I think it feels fresh and youthful and colorful, which is an acknowledgement, not only of the students who kickstarted our project, but also of the indigenous roots of this third of the city.”
Gonzales was heavily involved with every phase of the exhibit project as lead curator. “I had free range to shape the project,” she said. She worked with numerous collaborators, including 43 advisers, 30 interns and fellows, and numerous storytellers and donors of objects, as well as the museum’s staff, including the collection department, designers, graphic designers, educators and others.
“I selected the majority of the objects and wrote the majority of the text,” Gonzales said.
Many objects were collected from people in the community. Gonzales said they also “mined” the museum’s own collection and also were able to acquire some new objects for the museum’s permanent collection.
Plus, Gonzales said, “We were very fortunate to have a lot of loans from very generous lenders.”
One item that was on Gonzales’ wish list was a Paleta cart, a rolling cooler often used by street vendors for frozen treats, and one was donated by Reina de Sabores Paleteria in Chicago.
“It’s a big, beautiful object that everyone can relate to,” Gonzales said. “And it brings people into the space and helps them feel, not only welcome, but familiar in the space. It was in use for more than 35 years and, during those 35 years, it moved around the city with its person — around 100,000 miles.”
She also highlighted a red cooler that is on loan from a chef who calls himself The Tamale Guy.
“He has been selling tamales in north side bars for decades out of this cooler,” Gonzales said. “It’s iconic.”
Gonzales is hoping that people who visit the exhibit “will learn about the longstanding and pervasive presence of this third of the city and the specific histories around that.”
Aqui en Chicago runs through Nov. 8 at the Chicago History Museum. Gonzalez’s talk about the exhibit and other highlights of her career is at 7 p.m. Oct. 6 at the Oak Park River Forest Museum, 129 Lake St. in Oak Park. More information is at oprfmuseum.org/events/aqui-en-chicago. The event is included with regular museum admission of $5 for Oak Park and River Forest residents; $7 nonresidents; and $3 for students age 7 through college.
Myrna Petlicki is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
More Top Picks Best Outdoor String Lights For Patio