Media Contact
Raymond Mathews
Lowe Art Museum
[email protected]
305.284.5422
ArtLab @ The Lowe:
Conquest and Coexistence: The Cultural Synthesis of Spanish Colonial Art
May 16, 2014 - April 26, 2015
CORAL GABLES, FL (April 29, 2014) – Conquest and Coexistence: The Cultural
Synthesis of Spanish Colonial Art was curated by University of Miami students
supervised by Karen Mathews, Assistant Professor of Art History. It is the sixth
installment in the series, ArtLab @ The Lowe, which provides hands-on museum
experience to students, who curate an exhibition from the conceptual state to the final
installation.
The Spanish conquest of the Americas could be characterized as one of the most
cataclysmic events in early modern history. The coming of the conquistadors brought
war, disease, and untold suffering to the indigenous peoples during a territorial
conquest that took decades to consolidate. In the wake of the Spaniards’ military
triumphs, the people of the Americas were subsumed within the Spanish Empire under
the control of new secular and religious authorities: the viceregal government and the
Catholic Church. Though the imposition of colonial control initially was unilateral, the
history of cultural encounter in the American colonies over the almost three hundred
years of Spanish rule was far from monolithic. This exhibition explores the unique
cultural synthesis forged in the Americas as the result of coexistence between Spanish
colonizers and local populations and the processes of dialogue and negotiation,
cooperation and resistance that defined the formation of Spanish colonial visual culture.
The exhibition focuses on four themes that elucidate the new visual vocabulary and the
varied patrons and audiences of Spanish colonial art. Travel addresses the initial
movement of Spanish culture overseas and its immediate mingling with the rich artistic
traditions of the Americas. Home treats the syncretic religious art developed for private
devotion in the colonies, where new Christian imagery was integrated with older
religious belief systems and iconography. Concentrating on Christian art for public
consumption, the Church aimed to teach, convert, and amaze in its erecting of
extraordinary architectural structures ornamented with a dazzling array of religious
figures and scenes. Finally, the unimaginable wealth of the colonies manifested itself in
secular art as well, and the aristocracy and upper middle class invested in luxury
objects made of a variety of costly materials to display their affluence and status both at
home and abroad. Spanish colonial art was a visual hybrid, a meshing of cultures in a
continual state of reformulation and reinterpretation throughout the centuries of its
existence.
Curated by students in the Spring 2014 ArtLab @ The Lowe under the direction of Dr.
Karen Mathews, Department of Art and Art History. The ArtLab series is generously
sponsored by Stella M. Holmes. Travel support provided by Copa Airlines, the Lowe Art
Museum, and University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences.
The Lowe Art Museum is located on the campus of the University of Miami at 1301 Stanford
Drive, Coral Gables. Museum gallery and store hours are Tuesday-Saturday 10 a.m. – 4 p.m.
and Sunday noon – 4 p.m. The Museum is closed Mondays and University holidays. General
Admission (not including programs) is $10, senior citizens and non-UM students are $5, and
free for Lowe members, UM students, faculty and staff, and children under 12. Admission is free
on Donation Day, the first Tuesday of every month. Public Program Admission is $10 for nonmembers and free for Lowe members. For more information, call 305.284.3535, tweet us
@loweartmuseum, follow us on facebook.com/loweartmuseum or visit lowemuseum.org.
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