Texas itself is a multi-colored quilt of ethnic and cultural groups, with 27 of them represented in the 50,000 square feet of exhibit space. More than 300,000 visitors come annually to learn, through individual stories and belongings, about the Indians, Africans, Mexicans, Europeans and Asians who together created a population as diverse as the Texas landscape itself.

A scale model of early San Antonio comes to life as everyday conversations between the various inhabitants become audible at the push of a button. You can step inside an authentic 1950s Westside San Antonio home (complete with dial phone, gas heater and grotto with a statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe out front) and a sharecropper's cabin, with its vintage newspaper wallpaper.

Depending on the time, you can see corn being ground by hand or a weaver working a loom or hear old-fashioned musical instruments being played by one of the 400 volunteers who contribute to making this such a unique experience.

One of the more popular areas is the Native Americans section, featuring dioramas of typical tribal life in front of which docents detail the everyday life of Texas' first inhabitants. An "Archaeology Drawer" features different earthen levels and what fossils or artifacts of human life might be found in each, and a genuine teepee fascinates young and old. This is a "hands-on" museum and young visitors can sit in an actual saddle, touch a real cotton bale and pet the large, stuffed Bison, who is so popular her coat is wearing thin. There are also shows in "The Texas Puppet Theatre" that are fun for kids, and "Gallery Theater" productions pop up at various locations from time to time throughout the Institute.

There is a genuine Chinese parade dragon in the Chinese area, an elaborate horse-drawn hearse used in nearby Castroville in the early 1900s in the area dedicated to the Alsatians, and photos, possessions and stories of individuals of German, French, Polish, Japanese, Danish, Hungarian, Dutch, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Belgian, Wendish, Jewish, African, English, Norwegian, Czech, Lebanese, Syrian, Scottish, Irish, Mexican, Anglo-American, Swedish, Swiss, Filipino and Native American origin. The Mexican and Spanish areas are now blending on the exhibit floor into a Tejano area, encompassing a more contemporary aspect of these groups.

"Singing to the Ancestors: Black Seminoles in Texas and Mexico" is one of the newer exhibits and incorporates a 42-foot, flat plasma screen featuring video footage taken in Brackettville, Texas and Nacimiento, Mexico that guides visitors through the little-known history and complex layerings of black Seminole culture. The Black Seminoles, sometimes called "Maroons," were composed of runaway slaves, Seminoles and other southeastern Indians who banded together and took refuge in Florida in the 1800s, eventually finding themselves forced on the infamous "Trail of Tears." A fiercely independent people, they fled Oklahoma to West Texas where the Anglicized version of the Spanish word "cimarron," meaning untamed, became "maroon."

Out back is an interpretive history area known as "The Back Forty," complete with one-room schoolhouse, frontier fort, Hill Country barn, immigrant wagon, log house and adobe house, which sees use during the annual Texas Folklife Festival in the summer and is the site for the "Bowie Street Blues Festival" during Fiesta (April 30 this year), featuring a wide variety of blues artists from across Texas.

With so much to see, read, touch and listen to, you'll find it hard to leave. One thing you won't want to miss is the regularly scheduled multi-screen presentation, "Faces and Places of Texas," part of the original Texas pavilion during HemisFair '68. Like a gigantic, constantly changing quilt overhead, the immense, multi-faceted dome reverberates with the story of the peoples of Texas, while viewers relax on the carpeted floor beneath. So tuck yourself under the ITC Texas "quilt" and enjoy!

The Institute of Texan Cultures is located at Bowie and Durango in HemisFair Park. Open Tuesday-Sunday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; adults, $4; children (3 to 12 years) and seniors (65+ years), $2. Children 2 years and under are free. For more information, call 458-2300.