This is the first major exhibition to explore the private lives, power struggles, and domestic collecting practices of the Spanish colonial elite, some of the wealthiest people of their time. It brings together some 160 paintings, sculptures, prints, textiles, and decorative art objects that demonstrate how the new moneyed classes in Spanish America, including the Caribbean, secured their social status through the spectacular private display of luxury goods from all over the world.
The exhibition will invite the visitor into an elite Spanish colonial home, beginning with public reception rooms hung with family portraits and filled with luxurious objects and ending with more private rooms where the family received only its most trusted confidants.
Creoles (Spaniards born in the New World), individuals of mixed race, and indigenous people were consistently less favored by the Spanish crown than those born in Spain for prominent local government and church positions. American-born elites responded by underscoring their status through the ostentatious display of luxury goods from around the world in their dress and in their homes as pointed reminders of the crown’s reliance on New World resources.
Behind Closed Doors has been organized by Richard Aste, Curator of European Art at the Brooklyn Museum, where it debuts before traveling to the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art. It is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by the Monacelli Press.
Generous support for this exhibition has been provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Christie’s, Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, and Constance and Henry Christensen III.
Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn NY, (718) 501-6334