Entrance in Taylor Hall, East Building

This exhibition features more than 100 works drawn from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s notable collection of Spanish colonial art, which has largely been formed in the last fifteen years. The paintings, sculptures, and decorative arts on view underscore the generative power of Spanish America and its central position as a global crossroads.

Imperial expansion, conquest, colonization, and the trans-Atlantic slave trade marked the period spanning from 1500 to 1800. Cataclysmic social and geopolitical shifts brought people into closer contact than ever before in real and imagined ways, propelling the creative refashioning of the material culture that surrounded them. After the Spaniards began colonizing the Americas in the late 15th century and set out to spread Christianity, artists working there drew from a range of traditions—Indigenous, European, Asian, and African—reflecting the interconnectedness of the world. Private homes and civic and ecclesiastic institutions soon teemed with imported and local objects.

Spanish America was neither a homogeneous nor a monolithic entity, and local artists, including those who remain unidentified, were not passive absorbers of foreign traditions. While acknowledging the profound violence that marked the process of conquest and colonization, this exhibition explores the intricate social, economic, and artistic dynamics of these societies that led to the creation of astounding new artworks that were widely sought after and shipped around the world.

Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800 was curated by Ilona Katzew with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The organizing curators at SLAM are Genevieve Cortinovis, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Associate Curator of Decorative Arts and Design; Clare Kobasa, assistant curator of prints, drawings, and photographs; Judith W. Mann, senior curator of European art to 1800; and Amy Torbert, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Assistant Curator of American Art.
 

Image caption:
Antonio de Torres, Mexican, 1667–1731; Virgin of Guadalupe (Virgen de Guadalupe), c.1720; oil on canvas; 81 1/2 x 55 1/8 inches; Gift of Kelvin Davis through the 2014 Collectors Committee 2024.97; photo © Museum Associates/LACMA