MUSEUM OF INTERNATIONAL FOLK ART

Draw Your Favorite Ghost

A Museum Activity Kit

Orihon are accordion-style books, composed of a continuous folded sheet of paper enclosed between two covers. Compared to scrolls, accordion books are more practical and allow enough space for writing in a compact form.

To make an accordion book and draw your favorite Yokai ghost, monster or demon, you’ll need: • 2 chalk pastels • Blank paper for covers (5.5” x 8.5”) • 2 paper strips for scroll (5.5” x 17”) • 2 cardboard pieces (5” x 7”) • A shallow tub • Popsicle stick or plastic knife • Scissors, ruler and glue stick Find directions and other online activities at:

museumfoundation.org/education Activity kits for all Museum of New Mexico divisions are generously sponsored by $10,000 in private gifts through the Museum of New Mexico Foundation. The funds help create specialized activities for thousands of schoolchildren across New Mexico.

The Bilingual Connection

Museum Broadens Dual Language Outreach

For Kemely Gomez, the Museum of International Folk Art’s bilingual educator, outreach begins with representation. “It’s so important just to be able to say to students, ‘I speak Spanish. I am from Guatemala,’” she says.

Gomez, who has been with the Folk Art Museum since 2018, says that the educational programs she conducts with students in Santa Fe schools and libraries—as well as for kids and adults at Gerard’s House (a local center for grieving families)—begin with an open door and an invitation for participants to be themselves.

“We live in a state where Spanish is almost a second language. It’s so important that we support a bilingual environment for families,” Gomez says. A museum environment can be intimidating, she adds, for people who did not grow up visiting such institutions. “Every space should feel like an inviting space where you can share both English and Spanish, because that’s who you are.”

When Gomez began conducting folk art workshops at Santa Fe’s Southside Public Library, she was simply trying to connect the bilingual community to a place that houses many of the Spanish-speaking world’s cultural treasures.

Museum of International Folk Art Bilingual Educator Kemely Gomez. Photo by Saro Calewarts.

She brought books, art objects and projects to after-school programs at the library. The multigenerational outreach quickly proved successful, with over 120 families regularly attending summer programs. Gomez began to see many attendees at subsequent museum events. “That was wonderful,” she says.

To help negotiate the trauma that many Gerard’s House families face (separations at the border, kidnappings and detentions), Gomez says she deliberately seeks activities that “help them connect to the culture and tell their stories.” A recent Tree of Life project, in which adults constructed people and events in their lives from clay, was “kind of like an automatic open door. They talk about the theme, and we use it as a tool for sharing harder things.”

During an ongoing partnership with El Camino Real Academy, a bilingual PreK-8 Community School in Santa Fe, Gomez says that appearing in students’ classrooms speaking both English and Spanish is “an aha moment where students feel connected and comfortable. It’s meaningful.”

Leslie Fagre, the museum’s director of education, says that, with an 80 percent minority student population in Santa Fe Public Schools, “to have somebody who is a role model, who has the experience of immigrating here, is so valuable.”

The bilingual education program is just one way the museum is looking to fulfill the American Alliance of Museums’ initiatives of Diversity, Equity, Accessibility and Inclusion. A new priority is making all label texts for exhibitions bilingual, as well as providing lesson plans in English and Spanish. Fall outreach plans include multiple visits to classrooms by educators, with a final project exhibited at the museum for a family and student reception.

After a year of remote learning, says Fagre, “We’re really putting our outreach focus on the schools now.” The museum has already expanded its local purview with summer programs in Española, Las Vegas and Pecos, and activity kit (see sidebar) distribution to points further north.

For the museum’s fall education programs, Fagre notes that immediate private funding is needed for buses, art supplies and exhibition installation, as well as reception costs and honoraria for folk artists who donate their teaching time.

To support the Museum of International Folk Art, contact Laura Sullivan at Laura@museumfoundation.org or 505.216.0829.

A selection of bilingual books in English and Spanish, part of the educational programs of the Museum of International Folk Art. Photo by Saro Calewarts.