Agustín Arteaga

Dallas Museum of Art

Award: Outstanding Latino Nonprofit Leader

Just now marking his first year as the Eugene McDermott Director at the Dallas Museum of Art, Mexico City-born Agustín Arteaga has already influenced North Texas. The museum recorded the second-largest number of visitors in its history, with more than 802,000 people roaming the museum’s halls and exhibits during its latest fiscal year.

But for Arteaga, more important than the impressive figure is making sure that first-time guests don’t remain that way. He wants visitors to think of the museum as a destination, a place to learn, a place to meet people—a place they can return to. “I believe the collections we hold are so impressive,” he says, “that the potential of using them to make a really engaging program for visitors from all over Dallas … [and] from all around the world” is very great.

Already, Arteaga has implemented an internal bilingual task force focused in part on English-Spanish signs. “One thing that we agreed to do right away was to start presenting every temporary exhibition with bilingual text, bilingual labels, wall labels, individual works labels, so all new shows come out with that,” he says.

Arteaga says he intends to reach out to all communities and find ways to relate to them in line with their own traditions and cultures. On the horizon for mid-November, for example, is a festival titled “Islamic Art Celebration: The Language of Exchange.” The three-day event will celebrate Islamic art and culture as a nod to the Keir Collection of Islamic Art, which is on long-term loan to the DMA. “I think that’s the big goal—to start conversations across cultures in your own city, so people can learn about what has happened in the world through 5,000 years of human history,” he says.

Arteaga and the DMA deployed the “Yo Soy DMA” (“I am DMA”) initiative in partnership with Dallas’ Latino Center for Leadership Development. As part of the initiative, a group of volunteers went out into the community to start the conversation on this year’s “México 1900-1950: Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, José Clemente Orozco, and the Avant-Garde” DMA exhibition, which Arteaga spearheaded. The ambassadors also waited inside the museum walls receiving visitors. “They would tell people not only about the Mexico show, but also that the museum has four floors … that are worth visiting,” Arteaga says. “They also told them that they can come back as many times as they want, because the museum is free for everyone throughout the year” [except for certain special exhibits, and even they are free on the museum’s Family Days].

Half the people who visited the Mexico exhibit on Family Days were first-time visitors to the museum, Arteaga says. Once the first-timers were identified by museum staff, he goes on, “we started making recommendations about what the museum is and how they can benefit” from it.

Over the course of the 12 DMA Family Days, more than 37,000 visitors came to the museum.

‘Yo Soy DMA’

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