6th Annual ArtLab @ The Lowe Opens
May 16, 2014 – April 26, 2015
The Lowe Art Museum
University of Miami
1301 Stanford Drive
Coral Gables, FL
Public Program Admission is $10 for non-members and free for Lowe members.
Conquest and Coexistence: The Cultural Synthesis of Spanish Colonial Art
On View: May 16, 2014 – April 26, 2015
Conquest and Coexistence: The Cultural Synthesis of Spanish Colonial Art, the sixth installment of ArtLab @ The Lowe, opens May 16. The exhibition was curated by University of Miami students supervised by Karen Mathews, Assistant Professor of Art History. The ArtLab series 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. 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, the first category, addresses the initial movement of Spanish culture overseas and its immediate mingling with the rich artistic traditions that already existed in the Americas.
· The second section, associated with the home, focuses on the religious art developed for private devotion in the colonies, where new Christian imagery was integrated with older religious belief systems and iconography.
· The section devoted to the Church concentrates on Christian art for public consumption, showing how 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.
The ArtLab @ The Lowe series is generously sponsored by Stella M. Holmes. Travel support is provided by Copa Airlines, the Lowe Art Museum and the UM College of Arts and Sciences.
