Tola’s Room: How Student-Led Virtual Tours of Baltimore’s House-Museum Challenge Traditional Museum Practices

• In Event: Insurgent Ruptures and Infrastructures of Memory: Community Museums, Digital Resistance, and Post-Imperial Futures

Abstract

This paper examines the role of community museums as archival and educational spaces through the lens of Tola’s Room, an immersive museum of Puerto Rican history and diaspora established in 2020 by Christina Delgado in her Baltimore home. Tola’s Room disrupts traditional museum practices by fostering a sensory and interactive engagement with Puerto Rican culture, featuring family relics, local art, and diaspora history. Its unconventional format integrates scents, clothing, records, and books, creating a deeply personal and community-centered narrative that challenges the institutional norms of accessibility and representation. The paper specifically explores the impact of student-led virtual tours on the museum’s cultural and educational objectives. A summer course designed to provide students with opportunities to collaborate directly with the museum, crafting digital experiences that amplify its community-focused ethos, I analyze how students engaged with archival practices and storytelling techniques, learning to navigate the intersection of technology, heritage, and education. Key questions addressed include: How do student-created virtual tours enhance accessibility and community engagement within the context of Tola’s Room? In what ways do these tours reflect the museum’s commitment to representing the Puerto Rican diaspora and fostering an inclusive historical narrative? How can the lessons learned from this collaboration inform broader educational and archival programming in similar community-based settings? This paper argues that initiatives like Tola’s Room and virtual tours challenge the conventional boundaries of museum spaces by prioritizing lived experiences, community engagement, and multisensory interaction over traditional, object-centered curation. It also underscores the transformative potential of student-led projects in reimagining how art, history, and identity are preserved and shared.

Author

• Maria Celleri, University of Maryland-Baltimore County