Bernalillo Community Museum’s interactive approach aims to spark deeper conversations

Bernalillo Community Museum director Emily Stovel said the exhibits reflect on community groups that share their perspectives and invite conversations. (Matt Hollinshead/Observer)

BERNALILLO — The Bernalillo Community Museum seeks to provide history buffs and curious patrons an interactive experience in learning the area’s history, one that sparks deeper conversations where people delve into their own experiences.

Although COVID-19 altered those plans in 2020 and the first part of 2021, the museum, which launched in July 2019, is ready to follow through.

“Complex topics demand complex expression,” museum director Emily Stovel said.

After making do with virtual activities throughout 2020 and the first part of 2021, Stovel said the museum resumed camp activities last summer. Kid (kids?) did things like make matachines headdresses and trying the dances.

From there, exhibits highlighting key historical moments with Bernalillo and New Mexico perspectives reopened.

Stovel said one exhibit discusses migration in New Mexico’s borderlands through the historical contexts of power, social justice and identity, what it meant over time and how people dealt with experiences.

“Understanding this complex space of the borderlands demands different voices, different perceptions… We want to have different opinions, different people expressing themselves in different languages,” she said.

One exhibit featured at the Bernalillo Community Museum discusses migration in New Mexico’s borderlands through the historical contexts of power, social justice and identity, what it meant over time and how people dealt with experiences. (Matt Hollinshead/Observer)

The Sandoval County Historical Society did a lot of the important historical research featured in the exhibits, and the museum provides an avenue for youth and families to participate, Stovel said.

She said the museum teaches history through activities and discussions that involve a family’s own experiences are a key component. These exhibits, she added, provide people the opportunity to listen to and process other perspectives.

Stovel said it’s critical that the museum avoids using a “top-down authoritative voice” and accepted narratives on history.

“History is built in its living, in its conversation and its relevance to the modern day and the future. So, history here as we experience it is about sharing it with each other,” she said. “People experience history and the present differently. So, it’s important to have that diversity of voice.”