A colleague took her to a room and opened a map case filled with folders of Central America solidarity posters from the 1980s. One day, while was doing research in the Latin American Studies department library, she asked if there were any political graphics about Central America in the collection. In 2019, Escalante enrolled in a master’s program in history at Cal State LA. I learned about all the labor that goes into making archival materials––from appraisal to the finding aid––accessible to the public.” “There I had the opportunity to develop and create archival displays in collaboration with my colleagues. “We wanted the labels to reflect the community that comes into the museum, so we made sure everything was bilingual.” Opening accessĪfter completing her museum internship, Escalante worked as a student archives assistant at Cal State LA Special Collections and Archives. According to 2021 census estimates, people of Hispanic and Latino origin make up 49 percent of the city’s population.

“Ideas of accessibility are really important to me, especially being in Los Angeles” she said. And I translated the labels into Spanish. From the interviews, I wrote the labels for the wall. I also interviewed artists for their 2017 exhibition Con Safos: Reflections of Life in the Barrio. “I got to do historical research to build content for the exhibitions.

“Because the team there was really small, I got to try my hand at a lot of different positions,” she said.

While studying history as an undergraduate at California State University, Los Angeles (Cal State LA), she pursued an internship at a “small” museum: the Museum of Social Justice in Los Angeles, a single room in the basement of a church. When Nancy Escalante-curator of the new Hanke exhibit Empire and Resistance-arrived at Yale as a PhD student in American Studies, she had already discovered her passion for the archives and for museum work.

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