Asylum in the Gallery: Language Education for Unhoused Migrants

In 2024, humanitarian volunteers in New York began accompanying unhoused asylum seekers to Kenkeleba House Gallery, initially seeking warmth during the city’s migrant shelter crisis. What began as an act of necessity evolved into improvised English lessons using the exhibition Long Journey Forward: Black Men in Passage. Observational evaluation suggests that inquiry-based, translanguage tours fostered accelerated language acquisition, participant agency, and civic and cultural integration among participants. This paper argues for integrating museum education and humanitarian work through multilingual gallery teaching, and offers autoethnographic reflections on the reciprocal lessons museum professionals and humanitarian volunteers can offer each other.