Message From Met's Social Media Manager: Museums Are for Everyone

It’s this thoughtful approach that has defined Vidangos’ career: using digital storytelling to break down barriers in the arts. She has built platforms to share what it’s like to navigate museums as a Latina professional and created new ways to spotlight underrepresented artists across the country. Now, at the Met, she’s applying that vision on one of the largest stages in the art world.

“Growing up, I rarely saw artists who looked like me or shared my cultural background represented in mainstream galleries or museums,” she said. “What drives me is making sure people see themselves reflected in these spaces, whether that’s an artist finding visibility or a visitor realizing the museum can be their museum too.”

The daughter of Bolivian parents, Vidangos enrolled at UMD in 2004 feeling like she had achieved her family’s American dream. But navigating college wasn’t always easy. She started as a government and politics major, switched to studio art and, after her junior year when the global financial crisis hit, left school to work full time. For years she assumed she wouldn’t return—until a community college course in art history years later reminded her where she felt most at home. “I knew I had to go back to Maryland and get my bachelor’s in art history,” she said.

Commuting from Gaithersburg while holding down a job, she approached her studies with a sharper sense of purpose. That deepened in classes with Senior Lecturer Aneta Georgievska-Shine, who not only guided her through early modern art but also introduced her to the museum world firsthand. In a colloquium course, Vidangos visited museums across the DMV and spoke with curators, conservators and educators about their work. 

“She gained a much deeper understanding of the variety of career paths for students of art history,” Georgievska-Shine said. More than anything, she remembered Vidangos’ “openness and sincere desire to learn in order to grow—both professionally and as a person.”

After graduating, Vidangos took her first job in a Smithsonian museum store. From there, a graduate degree in museum studies at George Washington University, a social media course that illuminated new ways to engage audiences, and ever-expanding roles at the Smithsonian, Glenstone Museum and the Guggenheim.

By 2017, she was eager to tell her own story—about carving a path in the museum world. She created the blog “Latina in Museums,” which she described as a space to push “an unapologetic brown voice” into the field. There, she mused on everything from the market power of the Latinx community to the exorbitant “entry fee” of breaking into “the VIP club” of museum work. On Instagram, she expanded that diary into a more public chronicle, documenting her experiences at openings and exhibitions and meeting museum professionals around the country. 

That same year, she launched a second Instagram account with the intention to spotlight Latinx artists. Almost immediately, artists began tagging her, eager to share their work. The steady stream of messages pointed to a bigger problem: There was no central way to find U.S.-based Latinx artists.

Vidangos changed that with what grew into the Latinx Art Collective—featuring artist talks, online exhibitions, social media campaigns and, at its core, a database of nearly 500 artists searchable by name, medium and location. The mission is clear, she said: “Latinx art is American art.” 

At the Met, Vidangos continues to foster online conversations and highlight diverse narratives, while also finding creative ways to make the collection feel fresh and accessible. It might be a playful carousel inviting New Yorkers to a date night at the museum to experience John Singer Sargent’s portraits. Other times it’s a niche deep dive into an overlooked object in the collection. “The more you understand the work, the more you feel like it belongs to you,” she said. 

She’s also increasingly looking to support young artists and their work. For Vidangos, the goal is to stay visible and help others find their place in the arts.

“I’ve been unapologetic about who I am and what I stand for,” she said. “For me, it’s about using that voice to help open doors and make sure the change we talk about actually takes root.”