Imagine you’re a tourist from Spain, a recent arrival from Venezuela or maybe the Chicago-born child of an immigrant.
You’re stumbling into the Museum of Contemporary Art for the first time, and to your surprise, there are wayfinding signs in Spanish. There are explanatory texts in Spanish for all of the paintings and sculptures.
Among major American museums, the MCA is one of a few leading the way in language inclusivity and accessibility. And it is pushing forward with artwork labels and a Spanish-language version of its website despite President Donald Trump’s executive order in March to make English the official language of the U.S. More than 43 million people speak Spanish at home, according to census data, making it one of the most important languages in the country.
In Chicago, approximately one-third of the city is Latino, with a growing population of Spanish-speaking immigrants.
Spanish is no longer an “afterthought,” says Antonio Díaz Oliva, an editor at the MCA. Instead, the staff at the institution, where bilingual efforts launched in 2020, thinks about it from the beginning stages of a new exhibition. They also put a lot of thought into addressing the nuances in language that might work best for specific galleries based on topic — for example, some Chicagoans might speak a blend of Mexican and Puerto Rican (or MexiRican) Spanish.
Some local museums, such as the National Museum of Mexican Art in Pilsen or the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture in Hermosa, have had bilingual content and programming as part of their mission since the beginning. But the efforts by the MCA are setting a standard of what inclusivity can look like within institutions that previously catered to mostly English speakers.
Spanish no longer an “afterthought”
Díaz Oliva has worked at the MCA for nearly three years. He’s the first Latino in his role, and he’s written and presented about how translation in museums must be carefully considered.
He says that the launch of a 2023 exhibit, “entre horizontes: Art and Activism Between Chicago and Puerto Rico,” marked the beginning of something historic at the MCA: From that point forward, it became standard that all of the museum’s galleries feature descriptions in both English and Spanish.
The museum has also hosted a few “trilingual” exhibitions, which went beyond English and Spanish and included Farsi and Cree.
Díaz Oliva is also developing two guides that he hopes will influence other museums, including the MCA’s official translation statement and a forthcoming language style guide that museums can consult.
It’s paramount for museum staff to make art accessible to all, regardless of language, said Manuel Venegas, the MCA’s media relations director.
“The more people to come to the museum, the better,” Venegas continued. “We want everybody in Chicago to visit our museum. Our museum is Downtown, but we don’t want to be a museum just for the people Downtown.”
But embracing people of all backgrounds goes beyond translated texts and a Spanish website. Since 2023, the MCA has collaborated with the Mexican Consulate of Chicago for monthly family days. The consulate puts on bead-making workshops or facilitates games of lotería and more.
The museum welcomes 400 to 600 people for free on the second Saturday of each month during the school year. The program is 100% bilingual, said Alicia Sandoval Villado, the MCA’s manager of student and family programs.
They’ve expanded their reach by hosting a Día de Reyes or Three Kings Day celebration each January to welcome newly arrived children from Venezuela, Haiti, Guatemala, Honduras and beyond.
That day, complete with a Rosca de Reyes cake, is about providing some normalcy for migrant kids and teenagers, Venegas said.
The ripple effect
Not all museums have dedicated full-timers to their bilingual efforts, but staffers say they are trying to boost accessibility where they can.
At the Art Institute of Chicago, staff have had many conversations about what it means to attract and welcome bilingual audiences, said Gabriela Lavalle, who works part-time as a tourist specialist at the museum’s gallery activation department.
Two years ago, the AIC began offering Spanish-language tours twice a week, every Friday and Saturday at 2 p.m. Tours in Mandarin are available by appointment.
A recent interaction with some tourists sticks out as an example to Lavalle. A couple was caught off guard by tickets for an English language tour, but thanks to bilingual staff, they were able to swap their tickets for a tour in their native language.
“That also speaks about the importance of having … as much as we can in Spanish,” she said.
The museum has increased its Spanish-language gallery programs, too, Lavalle said. “Every other month, we do gallery conversations that target either a specific theme or a specific exhibition,” she continued. At least two more are planned for 2025.
Limited budgets and modern technology
The work of translation and building out visitor services outside can be expensive. It’s also time-consuming and can require people to put in extra work to get it done.
Even Díaz Oliva recently told a peer: “You need to hire people and pay” them to do bilingual work — but it’s not always possible.
“We are a small museum with a small budget, and so every year the budget gets smaller,” said Ionit Behar, curator at the DePaul Art Museum.
Behar, whose specialty is Latin American contemporary and modern art, has worked at DePaul’s museum for five years.
“Some museums do only bilingual text when the content is related,” Behar said. “But for us, no matter what exhibition we do, everything’s in Spanish and English.”
Behar said it’s important to work with professional translators. “I’m not an expert in translation, but I’m a Spanish speaker,” Behar said. “So that’s helpful, but also not perfect.”
A federal grant helped fund the museum’s efforts to become fully bilingual.
Yet the Trump administration’s move to cancel funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services is muddying the future of some bilingual efforts.
At the University of Chicago’s Smart Art Museum, 5550 S. Greenwood Ave., funding that came from the federal museum grant is now gone.
“The fact that it’s not an option anymore really limits where you can go for funding for this type of work,” said Dr. Vanja Malloy, the museum director.
“Museums are not static institutions,” she said. “As the needs of our constituents change, it’s our responsibility to evolve, to meet them.”
The University of Chicago’s Smart Art Museum is working with Bloomberg Connects to produce select content hosted on Bloomberg’s app. It provides visitors with audio guides, among other useful information and supplemental reading, in multiple languages, for museums all over the country.
Courtesy of Jason Smith
The Smart is working with Bloomberg Connects to produce select content hosted on Bloomberg’s app. It provides visitors with audio guides, among other useful information and supplemental reading, in multiple languages, for museums all over the country. The museum will get its own audio set so it can record its audio and informational materials.
It’s of no cost to the Smart, and they’re a part of a cohort of institutions utilizing the same tech. Currently, the AIC, Guggenheim and The Met have used it for their audio guides and apps, alongside dozens of others.
Museums can input their own translated text, but the app’s auto-generated translations are powered by Google Translate, with that content marked.
Malloy said the app will help “bring in voices” from community members and students.
She adds that it’s “really exciting” for the Smart to have an app soon, which will “make things a lot more accessible.” That means a bilingual future for a museum without the cost of additional staffing.