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Mexican Art Exhibit Drives Record Museum Engagement With Dallas Latinos

“I haven’t seen this many brown people in the museum before,” said José Villanueva, a volunteer docent

An exhibit on modern Mexican masterpieces has drawn one of the largest and potentially most diverse crowds at the Dallas Museum of Art, NBC News reported.

More than half of guests who visited the traveling exhibition, entitled "Mexico 1900-1950: Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, José Clemente Orozco, and the Avant-Garde," since its opening in March were first-time museum visitors.

Corporate sponsorships allowed exhibit organizers to allow free entry on over a dozen "family days" and create the "Yo Soy DMA" campaign to promote the exhibit in heavily Latino areas, many of which have been disconnected from the museum in the past.

“I haven’t seen this many brown people in the museum before,” said José Villanueva, 28, a Dallas artist who volunteers as a docent with the “Yo Soy DMA” initiative.

The exhibit -- whose only U.S. stop ends in Dallas July 16 -- features bilingual information and over 200 pieces of modern art that mark the development of a national Mexican identity, like Kahlo's iconic "Las Dos Fridas" painting.

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