Colin Powell School
Decolonizing Museums: Student Catie Hernandez Combines Art and Activism
Anthropology and Art History major Catie Hernandez is a Macaulay Honors student and Co-President of the Macaulay Feminist Society. In this interview, Catie discusses how CCNY has created the perfect setting for her to combine her love of art and activism, and for her to be able to one day preserve the cultural heritages of traditionally disenfranchised peoples.
Please tell me a little about your background.
I am from a small Long Island town called Babylon. Despite growing up in an extremely conservative area, I was raised with liberal values and an emphasis on community service. My mom is a first-generation American and my dad is an immigrant from Cuba and an immigration lawyer himself, so I grew up valuing cultural diversity and the expansion of economic opportunity and social programs. From a young age, my parents also were sure to put me in extracurriculars that focused on community building, most notably the Girl Scouts which I continued with throughout high school. Being a scout had a huge influence on my character, as its emphasis on community service and female leadership showed me the importance of local activism and turned me into a lifelong feminist. Feminism then greatly impacted my choice for my Girl Scout Gold Award Project, which I worked on throughout high school and I continue to oversee to this day. For the project, I started a website, www.gscareergirl.com, an educational resource in which I interview women from a variety of careers about how they got to where they are and how they dealt with the struggles they faced. This serves both to educate high school girls on different careers from a woman’s perspective and to foster the idea of female mentorship in the next generation.
I also grew up with a deep appreciation for art. My parents constantly took me to museums, which taught me to value them as integral to cultural preservation and public education. In high school, I got an internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the Egyptian Wing, which cemented my desire to work in the museum field someday. However, due to my interest in activism, I spent much of my years in high school and my freshman year of college trying to find a career that merged these two passions.
What brought you to City College?
When I was applying for the Macaulay Honors program, I had no trouble deciding that CCNY was the right CUNY for me. My dad is a City College alumnus, and as I grew up, he always told me about how the financial aid CCNY gave him is what allowed him to become a lawyer and pursue his passions. City College has an amazing legacy of granting social mobility to its students, which drew me to apply. I also was awed by its history of activism and its historical location of Harlem. Not many colleges get to boast that they are mentioned in Malcolm X’s memoirs or that Ella Fitzgerald played shows just around the corner. Finally, CCNY’s beautiful campus could not be beaten, so it was a very simple choice for me.
What are you passionate about, and how does this drive your studies at CCNY?
At City College, I am an Anthropology and Art History major due to my interest in decolonization and anti-racism as they apply to Western museums. Almost all ethnographic art museums throughout the Western world have acquired stolen, looted, or unethically obtained artifacts from colonized cultures around the world. In most cases, those artifacts were presented as “primitive” and used to create exhibits that asserted Western dominance and white supremacy. Currently, there are hundreds of thousands of stolen art pieces that continue to fill museums and their storage spaces, and when they are put on display still uphold racist, colonial narratives.
In my career, I hope to be able to work on fixing these issues through the ideology of museum decolonization. Museum decolonization focuses not only on returning these objects to their original cultures, but also on expanding the cultural perspectives an institution portrays and ending the erasure of women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community from the dominant cultural narrative. Many museums around the world are beginning to reckon with their legacies of colonialism, and are bringing on Directors of Decolonization to facilitate the repatriation of stolen artifacts, work with cultural groups to broker agreements about the museum’s ethically retaining the objects, and ensure that the museum’s collections are presented in an anti-racist manner. My goal is to become a Decolonization Director. By internally advocating for the return of stolen objects and decolonizing the museum’s narratives, I will be able to aid in the dismantling of white supremacy as well as help in preserving cultural heritage through art, the two things which drive me most.
How has your career unfolded, and how has the Colin Powell School helped you along your path?
As I mentioned previously, I spent much of my freshman year searching for ways to intersect my interest in social justice initiatives and museum work. Opportunities through both the Colin Powell School and City College have been immensely helpful in that journey. Through my seminars as a Colin Powell Fellow for Leadership and Public Service, I have had the opportunity to do research and presentations on museum work and the colonialism present in Western artistic institutions. Through CUNY’s Cultural Corps program, I was able to get an internship at A.I.R. Gallery, a feminist non-profit gallery dedicated to intersectionality and the end of systemic racism. There, I have had the opportunity to work on creating social media content that highlights diverse people and groups that have typically been left out of historical narratives.
Would you like to share a significant memory from your time at CCNY so far?
One of the things I am proudest of is my work to help create events for the Macaulay Green Initiative and the Macaulay Feminist Society. As Outreach Coordinator for the Green Initiative, I planned a Careers in Sustainability panel, which brought in five professionals from diverse careers in sustainability to talk to CUNY students about their experiences and give them advice for their success. As Co-President of Macaulay Feminist Society, I have been able to help plan events like film screenings, political discussions, and panels on reproductive health that educate the CUNY community on feminist issues and promote intersectionality. I love being able to promote social justice initiatives in an approachable and interesting way, so having the opportunity to create events like those is a big source of joy for me.
What advice do you have for current students?
The most practical piece of advice I could give is to apply, apply, apply! Read your emails from the Colin Powell School and CUNY and make a list of every opportunity you might be suited for and their deadlines. Also be sure to reach out to professors in your major about your career interests, as they likely have connections in your field of interest. Keep a folder on your computer with all of your application answers, as oftentimes you will get asked the same few questions repeatedly and it makes it much easier to apply for a wide variety of opportunities. Have a general cover letter prepared that can be easily edited to be specific to a certain job, and have a few versions of your resume available that are suited to your different interests. Even if you think you might not be the best candidate for something, you’d be surprised how low application rates are for scholarships, fellowships, and internships because so many people doubt themselves. Be confident in yourself and your abilities, and don’t be afraid of rejection.