{"id":33910,"date":"2013-09-28T17:53:38","date_gmt":"2013-09-28T17:53:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=33910"},"modified":"2013-09-28T17:53:38","modified_gmt":"2013-09-28T17:53:38","slug":"art-review-in-the-new-world-trappings-of-a-new-social-order","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=33910","title":{"rendered":"Art Review: In the New World, Trappings of a New Social Order"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/09\/20\/arts\/design\/behind-closed-doors-regards-spanish-colonial-art.html\" target=\"_blank\">Art Review: In the New World, Trappings of a New Social Order<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\" target=\"_blank\">The New York Times<\/a><br \/>\n2013-09-19<\/p>\n<p><strong>Karen Rosenberg<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>\u2018Behind Closed Doors\u2019 Regards Spanish Colonial Art<\/em><\/p>\n<p>\u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.brooklynmuseum.org\/exhibitions\/behind_closed_doors\/\" target=\"_blank\">Behind Closed Doors: Art in the Spanish American Home, 1492-1898<\/a>,\u201d at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brooklynmuseum.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Brooklyn Museum<\/a>, leaves us in the strange position of marveling at the opulence of domestic life in the Spanish colonies while pondering some of the ugliest aspects of colonialism. This is awkward, to be sure, but also enlightening.<\/p>\n<p>As its voyeuristic title suggests, the show follows the layout of a typical house belonging to an elite member of New World society. Drawn largely from the museum\u2019s sizable collection of Spanish colonial art, it fashions a gorgeous set of temporary period rooms out of the fourth-floor special-exhibition galleries. They overflow with sumptuous textiles, family portraits bearing coats of arms, fine silver and porcelain and gilded everything \u2014 arranged in the more-is-more manner of the Spanish American upper crust, with cabinets stacked in pyramids and luxury goods laid out on carpeted platforms&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;Also on view are \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Casta\" target=\"_blank\">casta<\/a>\u201d paintings that employ a rigid racial-classification system; one is called \u201cFrom Spanish and Indian, Mestizo,\u201d and shows a Spanish man and his indigenous wife with their mestizo, or mixed-race, baby. Here too are works that are not quite casta paintings but seem closely related, such as the group portrait \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=11779\" target=\"_blank\">Free Women of Color With Their Children and Servants in a Landscape<\/a>\u201d by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lennoxhonychurch.com\/brunias.cfm\" target=\"_blank\">Agostino Brunias<\/a> (an Italian working in the British colonies). The painting is not as progressive as it sounds; it reinforces colonial hierarchies of race and class by surrounding its fashionable young heroine \u2014 one of the \u201cfree women\u201d of the title \u2014 with darker-skinned attendants who may well be her slaves&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/09\/20\/arts\/design\/behind-closed-doors-regards-spanish-colonial-art.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Art Review: In the New World, Trappings of a New Social Order The New York Times 2013-09-19 Karen Rosenberg \u2018Behind Closed Doors\u2019 Regards Spanish Colonial Art \u201cBehind Closed Doors: Art in the Spanish American Home, 1492-1898,\u201d at the Brooklyn Museum, leaves us in the strange position of marveling at the opulence of domestic life in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,21,8,20],"tags":[15957,15958,2640,2327],"class_list":["post-33910","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-latincarib","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-brooklyn-museum","tag-karen-rosenberg","tag-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33910\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}