Ernest Silva’s INSITE97 Community Engagement project, Family Trees/Árboles de familias, was a collaboration with artist Alberto Caro-Limón that linked the Children’s Museum/Museo de los Niños in San Diego to the Centro Cultural in Tijuana. Each site allowed children to write their own family stories and draw family portraits. Both installations were brightly colored and filled with images of houses, trees, birds, and birdhouses to symbolize the exchange of memories and stories from one museum to the other. The space at the Children’s Museum was a rain house that functioned as a studio, reading room, and exhibition space for the children’s family projects. At the Centro Cultural, the space contained children-sized houses, benches and work spaces, and painted wood-picket fences and trees. The projects created at each installation then traveled to the other to be exhibited to complete the exchange of stories and perspectives.

Project directors: Claudia Basurto and Lisa Mack
Organizers: Children’s Museum/ Museo de los Niños, San Diego, and Centro Cultural, Tijuana
Venues: Children’s Museum/Museo de los Niños, San Diego, and Centro Cultural, Tijuana

Acknowledgments