The Molina Family Latino Gallery is the first physical presence of the National Museum of the American Latino, a 4,500-square-foot gallery within the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC. Teaming up with the Smithsonian Latino Center, Potion, Angelica Jang and others we designed and built an exhibition space that presents bilingual stories for multigenerational and cross-cultural audiences.

My focus was on the welcome experience Meet Us and the conversation experience Foro and I came on to the project after initial plans of the gallery space and experiences had been approved to take over design responsibilities and engineering of both. Each is built presenting content created by the Smithsonian Latino Center’s content teams such that they can be expanded on, changed and refocused in the planned 10 years the exhibits are set to run. Both experiences take place in our digital Plaza, a culturally specific, collaged diorama-style space that presents museum-goers with uniquely distinct Latino places and landmarks and both are built using the Unity game engine supported by the Smithsonian’s CMS.

Meet Us

Welcome to the gallery

Meet Us is the gallery’s welcome experience presented within the museum’s hallway at the entrance of the gallery on a 14’ by 8’ screen flanked on both sides by two semi-transparent holographic film sandwiched angled glass panel wings that allow museum-geors to peek at hints of the space. When idle our storytellers walk across the screen as scenes and items cycle in and out within the background. However when a museum-goer approaches, one of our storytellers at nearly life size will stop, turn to face them, welcome them to the gallery and lead them into the hall.

Foro

Hear from storytellers firsthand

Foro is our storyteller conversation experience. Presented on 2’ by 7’ sized towering touch screen. Museum-goers approach and interact with our storytellers, “asking” them questions on topics ranging from identity, reflections on the Latino experience in the US and well beyond. The experience also shares artifacts and documentary of events, and directs museum-goers to the location in the gallery of relevant physical items.

With Foro and each of the other interactive exhibits we focused extensively on making each piece accessible to the most number of people. This meant providing means for physically, visually or hearing impaired with digital and physical assistance and working with an external expert consulting agency to make sure it was done well.

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