Reimagining the Américas: New Perspectives on Spanish Colonial Art

This symposium, presented in conjunction with the exhibition Colonial Crossings: Art, Identity, and Belief in the Spanish Americas, will feature a select group of established scholars whose work encompasses a variety of regions and approaches to colonial Latin American art history will offer new methodologies, seeking to expand the boundaries of this visual culture. 

Presentations will explore the exhibition’s thematic emphases on materiality and sacredness, hybridity and cross-cultural exchange, colonial constructions of race, and recovering art histories marked by silence and erasure. The event will also feature a tour and discussion of the exhibition with the curators.

The Friday keynote lecture is free and open to the public. Please see the webpage for instructions to register in advance for free in-person attendance on Saturday. Presentations will also be available to livestream.

This symposium has been made possible through the generous support of the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation.

Colonial Crossings: Art, Identity, and Belief in the Spanish Americas was cocurated by Dr. Andrew C. Weislogel, Seymour R. Askin, Jr. ’47 Curator of Earlier European and American Art at the Museum, Dr. Ananda Cohen-Aponte, Associate Professor of the History of Art & Visual Studies, and the Cornell University students in the course Colonial Connectivities: Curating the Arts of the Spanish Americas.

Keynote Lecture
Friday, November 8, 5:15PM 

Ilona Katzew, curator and department head of Latin American Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), will discuss “Spanish America at the Center of the World” at this free program, open to the general public and available to livestream. A reception will follow.

Speaker Presentations
Saturday, November 9, 8:30AM–4PM

Speakers and topics are scheduled to include Lucia Abramovich, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Jennifer Baez, University of Washington; Cristina Cruz González, Oklahoma State University; Mónica Dominguez Torres, University of Delaware; Juliana Fagua Arias, Cornell University; Elena FitzPatrick Sifford, Muhlenberg College; Patricia García Gil, Cornell University; and Maya Stanfield-Mazzi, University of Florida. A livestream will be available.

Image: Unidentified artist, Quito, Ecuador. Noah’s Ark (detail), late 18th century. Oil on canvas. Collection of Carl & Marilynn Thoma, 2000.004.