During the planning and experimental stages of the program, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection collaborated with MILE, Museums and Innovation in Language Education, a project launched by the CREL (Center for Research in Educational Linguistics) at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.

MILE explores aspects related to language learning and teaching in out-of-school settings like the museum. Following consultations with MILE on aspects related to training and professional development, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection decided to employ translanguaging as the main approach on which to base the program.

Translanguaging is a pedagogical approach that promotes plurilingual and pluricultural learning, encouraging people to subscribe to the idea that all languages and cultures are of equal value.

By implementing this approach, I Go to the Museum achieves various educational and social goals. As well as having a positive impact on learning Italian as a second language, during the activities all the participants are encouraged to contribute their skills and knowledge in recognizing the similarities and differences between different languages and cultures, thus also practicing their metalinguistic skills and cross-language flexibility.

Translanguaging also offers potential benefits in terms of social inclusion: the activities favor inclusion in terms of access, participation and representation, through an experience that leads each participant to affirm their identity, increasing their psychophysical wellbeing.

In 2019 the Peggy Guggenheim Collection presented Migrating Objects, an exhibition that displayed all the objects collected by Peggy Guggenheim coming from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, with the aim of highlighting the contexts they originated in.

Alongside the exhibition, the museum organized a series of public programs based on the exhibition’s central theme: migration, understood as a definitive or temporary transfer of living beings from one territory to another, determined by various reasons, but essentially for life necessities. (Dizionario di Storia, Treccani on-line, 2010).

With these ideas in mind, Migrating Objects (later renamed I Go to the Museum) was conceived as an experimental program that aimed to offer an educational experience centered on the works of art in the exhibition and based on translanguaging. The goal was to examine the theme of migration and the intersection of cultural, social, and symbolic values generated by the movement of people and objects from one place to another.

During the Migrating Objects exhibition, despite the long periods of closure caused by the covid-19 pandemic, over 1,000 students, 70 teachers, and 6 museum educators were involved in the program.

The end of the exhibition did not determine the end of the program. MILE ran a training course for the educators of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection on the use of translanguaging in informal settings and worked on co-designing new tours and activities centered on the works of art on view from the permanent collection.

In line with the goals of the UN Agenda for Sustainable Development, I Go to the Museum aims to promote the value of multilingualism and multiculturalism in contemporary society.

The translangauging approach has proved to be key to making the program effective alongside other organizations, programs, and initiatives that provide processes of integration for foreigners. It was also successful in reestablishing the museum’s role in the creation of a multicultural and multilingual society.