“Common Languages, Distinct Accents: Mexican Ceramics in Dialogue at the MFA Boston and Beyond” by Lucia Abramovich Sánchez

“Common Languages, Distinct Accents: Mexican Ceramics in Dialogue at the MFA Boston and Beyond”

In this presentation, Lucia Abramovich Sánchez will explore the distinct regional accents embedded in Mexico’s long and diverse history of ceramic production. She will convey how these are distinguished — or overlooked — in their presentation within museum exhibitions and collections, particularly in U.S. and European institutions. Beginning with a brief overview of pottery traditions in pre-contact Mesoamerica and the Viceroyalty of New Spain, this presentation will trace the aesthetic evolution and material practices of ceramic production in two regions — Puebla and Jalisco — whose rich legacies are the most prominently represented in international museum holdings. Puebla’s Talavera Poblana, with its cobalt blue glazes and iconography shaped by Asian and Islamic influences, and Jalisco’s burnished redwares, known for their aromatic clays and sculptural forms, will serve as primary case studies.

Through recent advances in scholarship on 17th-century Talavera Poblana, as well as an analysis of recent exhibitions and permanent displays that reexamine colonial ceramics across the Americas, Sánchez will illustrate how narratives around Mexican ceramics are being reshaped within global art history. She aims to highlight these gaps in the research of historical ceramics, such as the overlooked biographies of potters, intergenerational technical knowledge, and the histories of lesser-known centers like Natá, Panamá, and Santiago de Chile, and argue for a more inclusive and nuanced interpretive framework. 

Finally, Sánchez will propose curatorial strategies to increase the visibility of these works in underrepresented collections, especially interpretive models that frame Mexican ceramics not only as works of decorative art, but as objects of cultural memory that speak across time and place, telling stories that connect people around the world through the universal language of clay.

Lucía Abramovich Sánchez is the Carolyn and Peter Lynch Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She previously served as Associate Curator of Latin American Art at the San Antonio Museum of Art in San Antonio, Texas, and has also held curatorial positions at the New Orleans Museum of Art and at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian. At the MFA, she works with a wide range of artwork that includes decorative arts and sculpture from North America and Latin America, spanning over 3,000 years of history. Among her projects in development is a major reinstallation of the first floor of the MFA’s Art of the Americas wing, which will reopen in June 2026 to mark the U.S. Semiquincentennial. Dr. Abramovich Sánchez earned her B.A. from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia and received her M.A. from the Sainsbury Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, United Kingdom. She holds a Ph.D. from the Latin American Studies & Art History joint doctoral program at Tulane University, New Orleans. 

Image: Basin (lebrillo), Damián Hernández (Mexican, born in Spain, active 1607 – 1670), tin-glazed earthenware (Talavera), 1650–1670.Diameter 23 13/16 in. x H. 7 7/8 in. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, museum purchase with funds from the Estate of Robert J. Morris (accession number 2018.2761). Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.