Curator Ilona Katzew will take a close look at a range of objects created in Spanish America recently acquired by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and consider the importance of their material, stylistic, and contextual histories as well as their patterns of circulation. Some of these works resonate closely with those on view in the exhibition Colonial Crossings: Art, Identity, and Belief in the Spanish Americas. By connecting these objects to their local centers of production and moving out to broader transatlantic and transpacific trends, the talk argues that true global stories depend on the aggregation of specific ones to establish a more inclusive and effective roadmap of material knowledge.
Ilona Katzew is Curator and Department Head of Latin American Art at LACMA. Recognized as one of the leading curators and scholars in her field, Katzew formed LACMA’s world-class collection of Spanish American art and has made highly visible acquisitions of modern and contemporary Latin American art, including design. She has curated numerous exhibitions and has lectured widely across the United States, Latin America, and Europe. She is the author and editor of multiple field-defining publications, including New World Orders (1996), Casta Painting: Images of Race in Eighteenth-Century Mexico (2004), Una visión del México del Siglo de las Luces: La Codificación de Joaquín Antonio de Basarás (2006), Race and Classification: The Case of Mexican America ( 2009), Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World (2011), Painted in Mexico, 1700–1790: Pinxit Mexici (2017), and Archive of the World: Art and Imagination in Spanish America, 1500–1800 (2022).
This free keynote lecture, held in conjunction with the November 9 symposium “Reimagining the Américas: New Perspectives on Spanish Colonial Art,” is open to all. A reception will follow the lecture.
Click here to join the webinar (Passcode: 647866).
The “Reimagining the Américas” symposium has been made possible through the generous support of the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation.
Image (courtesy of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art): Cabinet and writing desk (detail of drawer). Unidentified artists (Paraguay, possibly Franciscan mission), 18th century. Wood, mother-of-pearl, and bronze. Collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of the 2022 Collectors Committee with additional funds provided by Ryan Seacrest, Ann Colgin & Joe Wender, and the Bernard and Edith Lewin Collection of Mexican Art Deaccession Fund, M.2022.11.1–.28.