Introduction

 Hello!

    My name is Martha Samaniego Calderón and I am the CVAD Galleries Onstead Fellow for this school year (2021-2022).

    I am currently during my fifth week into the Fellowship where I have been working with Stefanie Dlugosz-Acton, the director of the CVAD Galleries, to make my learning objectives achievable. I really want to put theory into practice and experience what is involved in a museum within the University setting.  I want to learn about the process of the different projects planned and how to troubleshoot when unpredictable situations happen. Right now, we are working with our current exhibition Florielgium  with artist  Matthew Ritchie.  This exhibition is in constant evolution as it is a 4-part multilayered project that has been giving (and will continue to give) space for students from all majors, staff, faculty and community to interact.

    This week, I am in the process of designing a "pedagogical tool" that will be available at the gallery in next two weeks for the public to use as they interact with the 36 GAN-created paintings by Matthew Ritchie. I've been using most of my time researching his work and revising theory from last semester around Museum Education. I am really excited and nervous to try something like this because I have never done it. This year , we are all still working around COVID-19 and while this is challenging, I like to think that it is giving us an opportunity to be creative and keep cultivating modified/new  learning experiences.

Here are some examples of what I've been thinking so far:

    Finally, I also have been working on the translation of the text in the gallery from English to Spanish. One of my goals for this fellowship is to make the CVAD galleries accessible for Spanish speaking visitors since Texas is the State with most Spanish speakers in the country with 26% of its population being native Spanish speakers. This goes along with another personal goal during this fellowship which is to understand how can the CVAD galleries help to support Hispanic/Latinx/Latino/Latina students' success?

I hope you can come visit us at the gallery soon! There is a concert "Infinite Movement" with special guest, UNT alumni Shara Nova on October 9th at 7pm at the CVAD courtyard.