And while the National Air and Space Museum's loans of name tags of Hispanic astronauts may make some sense, why is Deke Slayton's space suit here, even though he apparently had no Hispanic background? Esparza explained that the suit was displayed "to animate the story."
Meanwhile, a 1958 Vanguard satellite is shown, according to a wall note, because it "reflects the ancient Maya's fascination with the cosmos" — a fascination that as far as a viewer can tell had nothing to do with the satellite's design or purpose. How does all this "tell the story of the Latino experience in America"?
Other parts of the museum, including the second floor's main exhibition with its photographs of Conjunto singers by John Dyer, provide a more direct connection with the museum's themes. Conjunto — a spirited mingling of Mexican styles with local German immigrant styles — is intriguing in its own right, though the sheer number of photographs and the relics of singers will have resonance mainly for fans.
As a curatorial enterprise — let alone one that is meant to live up to declared ambitions (and a claim on national attention) — the overall effect is strange indeed. But two items stand out in contrast. The only vivid sense of Latino history and life in the main exhibition is in a video having nothing to do with the museum itself, accompanying a National Portrait Gallery bust of the choreographer Jose Limon. The video — an abridged version of the documentary Limon: A Life Beyond Words — uses Limon's own words to tell about his childhood in Mexico and his family's immigration to the US. For a short while, the idea of Hispanic voices telling their stories makes sense; so do the artistic ambitions of the documentarians (Ann Vachon and Malachi Roth).
The other item is the gift shop. It is the creation of a San Antonio artist, Franco Mondini-Ruiz, and is meant to double as a kind of performance art. Here, in a carefully mounted miscellany, are gathered for sale the passions of Hispanic-American life, combining Dada and devotion, high-camp sensation and solemn figurines, kitsch and art — traditions clashing and mingling with enthusiastic glee. The gift shop, meant to invoke folk botanica storefronts with their arrays of herbal cures and icons, seems more authentic and celebratory than many of the shops in the Market Square here and more suggestive about the vibrancy of Hispanic-American culture than much of the Museo Alameda itself.
Since exhibitions will change at least every six months or so, perhaps over time the museum will grow more expert in hyphenation and explanation. Something derived from this botanica might also help.
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