Colonial Crossings: Exhibition Celebration and Student Research Spotlight

This special event was held in celebration of “Colonial Crossings: Art, Identity, and Belief in the Spanish America” (July 20–December 15, 2024), the first exhibition of colonial Latin American art at Cornell. The works of art and student research from the Spring 2024 course that developed the exhibition recognize the creative agency and resilience of Indigenous, Black, and mixed-race artists during a tumultuous historical period bookended by conquest and revolution, and consider the profound impact of colonization, evangelization, and the transatlantic slave trade in the visual culture of the Spanish empire. Andrew Weislogel, the Seymour R. Askin, Jr. ’47 Curator of Earlier European and American Art at the Johnson Museum, and Juliana Fagua Arias, PhD student in the History of Art, provide a brief overview of the exhibition’s conception, development, and resulting research.