The Roberta and Richard Huber Colloquium on the Arts and Visual Culture of Spain and the Colonial Americas

Description: In 1571, a full-length bronze statue of Fernando Álvarez de Toledo y Pimentel, Third Duke of Alba and governor of the Netherlands, disparagingly nicknamed “the Butcher of Flanders”, was erected in Antwerp. It was met with criticism, both on the part of the Spanish and the local population. Cast by Jacques Jonghelinck with molten bronze from the cannons of Louis of Nassau’s troops during the battle of Jemmingen (1568), the statue was taken down by Alba’s successor as governor, Luis de Requesens, in 1574. The subject of many prints, poems, and essays spanning from the eulogistic to the satirical, the monument was long said to have been torn to pieces by the populace after the fall of the citadel in 1577. In fact, the statue was likely hidden and later re-cast into new cannons by the Spanish themselves. Often called a “memoria” of the Duke, the now-lost monument survives in our memory only through proxies – chief among them, the bronze bust of the Duke now at the Frick Collection in New York. Outlining the history of the monument, its destruction, and its afterlives, this paper seeks to investigate the peculiarities of bronze as a fabric of memory. Now part of a museum display, Jonghelinck’s bust is a complex work: a familial keepsake, an object of unparallel artistic virtuosity, and (a reminder of) a public monument, it encourages nuanced thinking, asking questions as to the role of sculpture within and without the museum context.

Giulio Dalvit is Assistant Curator for Sculpture at the Frick Collection. In 2020-21, he worked as Guest Curator on the Frick Madison Project, focusing on the display of the Frick’s sculpture and medals collection in the Breuer building. Previously, he was Associate Lecturer at The Courtauld Institute of Art, where he also received his Ph.D. on the life and work of Lorenzo di Pietro, known as Vecchietta (Siena, 1410-80). His research has been published in catalogues, books and academic journals, including The Burlington Magazine, Art History, the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, the Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, among others. The receiver of a number of scholarships, Giulio has formerly worked and held fellowships both in curatorial and academic capacities at the Poldi Pezzoli Museum in Milan, the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, the University College London (UCL) in London, and the University of Amsterdam.

Description: Guillaume Kientz, Director & CEO of the Hispanic Society Museum & Library, will present an insightful lecture on the unique collection of the Hispanic Society, founded in 1904 as both a museum and library. The collection is unparalleled in its scope and quality, and includes paintings, sculpture, drawings, ceramics, glass, textiles, prints, photographs, furniture, as well as manuscripts, rare books, maps, and documents. The collection spans from the first millennium BC to the twentieth century, and documents the art, culture, and customs of the Iberian Peninsula, Latin America, the Philippines, and Indian Goa. As all cultural organizations strive to reinvent themselves to face the needs facing our society and serve the public to its fullest ability, the Hispanic Society is on the cusp of both its physical and intellectual transformation. Through its master plan addressing the landmark facilities, the Hispanic Society’s collection serves as the foundation to offer invigorating programming as well as being the cultural hub uptown Manhattan. The future is now and engagement is core to making a difference.

Guillaume Kientz currently serves as CEO and Director of the Hispanic Society Museum & Library (HSM&L) and is spearheading the museum’s restoration and renovation efforts to bring the historic institution into the present day.

An accomplished Art Historian and Curator, Kientz does not have the typical background of one in this profession. Rather than focusing his efforts singularly on university studies, Kientz dedicated much time to experiencing cultural institutions firsthand, traveling the world and discovering interesting objects and cultures. His unique background has given him the perspective of the visitor, using this viewpoint to approach the curation of exhibitions through the lens of the institution’s audience, making the visitor his top priority.

Kientz is a specialist in Spanish painting, and in particular the works of El Greco, Velazquez, Ribera and Goya, as well as in European Caravaggism.

At the Louvre, where he served as a curator in the Department of Paintings for eight years with a focus on Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American painting, Kientz developed the revered exhibition Le Mexique au Louvre. Chefs-d’œuvre de la Nouvelle Espagne, XVII–XVIIIe in 2013, bringing Mexican masterpieces to the spotlight for the first time in the institution’s history.

He is also recognized for the acclaimed exhibition Velázquez, shown at the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, in 2015, and has co-curated significant exhibitions including Ribera à Rome, held in 2014 at the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rennes and then later Musée des Beaux-Arts, Strasbourg.

More recently, Kientz co-curated the first comprehensive retrospective devoted to the Spanish Renaissance master El Greco, shown at the Grand Palais, Paris, in October 2019 before it moved to the Art Institute of Chicago in 2020.

Kientz has pursued research and earned degrees in political science from l'Institut d’Études Politiques (IEP) de Strasbourg and a Masters in Art History from Université Marc Bloc in Strasbourg. Following his graduation from the Institut National du Patrimoine, Paris, in 2008, he joined the Regional Direction of Cultural Affairs of Auvergne, France, where he oversaw the preservation of historic monuments and buildings, before his appointment to the Louvre in 2010.

His current research focuses on early 17th-century European painting, with an emphasis on artists in the circle of Caravaggio. Most recently, Kientz served as curator of European Art at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas before joining his current position as CEO and Director of the HSM&L in March 2021.

Kientz is the recipient of top industry honors and awards, including the Daniel Arasse Fellowship from Villa Medici, and regularly contributes articles and sections to the most important industry catalogues, publications and reviews. He is proficient in many languages including French, English, Spanish, Italian, German (speaking, reading, and writing), Dutch and Portuguese (reading).

Description: The Afro-Hispanic painter Juan de Pareja's life and artistic personality have been overwhelmingly read through the lens of Diego Velázquez, in whose household Pareja was enslaved for over two decades and who portrayed Pareja in the well-known portrait in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the nineteenth century, however, before the public accessibility of Velázquez's portrait and while Spanish art was still being written into the canon, writers and collectors treated Pareja as an independent figure with a depth and nuance that has been lost. This lecture aims to recenter Pareja by contextualizing what is known of his life and enslaved labor in seventeenth-century Spain while also attending to what we can glean from Pareja's own paintings executed following his manumission in 1654. Rather than read Pareja's artistic legacy as the product of years spent in Velázquez's studio, his paintings will be interpreted as the result of an extended Grand Tour education and the artist's response to his Madrid School contemporaries. Because some of the most conventional art historical tools – questions of stylistic development, influence, attribution and patronage – have been almost entirely ignored in Pareja's case, beginning to articulate his artistic agency using his canvases as primary evidence helps us to shift his position from remarkable subject to remarkable producer of works of art.

David Pullins, Associate Curator, Department of European Paintings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, is responsible for seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French, Italian and Spanish painting at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. He received his MA from the Courtauld Institute of Art and his PhD from Harvard University with a dissertation that addressed workshop practices in eighteenth-century France. He has published widely on seventeenth- through nineteenth-century paintings, drawings, and prints.

The Colloquium is the product of the generosity and continuing support of Roberta and Richard Huber, and we thank them heartily for making the current year’s activities possible.

Professor Arlene Dávila (NYU Department of Anthropology) recently published a provocative and highly informative book entitled Latinx Art: Artists, Markets and Politics (Duke University Press). This landmark publication treats the phenomenon of contemporary art by U.S. artists of Latin American descent ("Latinx" is a term that denotes gender neutrality). Dávila's deft analyses are essential for an understanding of a sector of the U.S. art world that has sometimes been less recognized by the museum and gallery establishment. In this conversation, Dávila will join Dr. Miriam Basilio (PhD, IFA) of NYU's Museum Studies Program and the Department of Art History to delve into the numerous compelling artistic and social issues of her subject.

This talk focuses on abstract art’s political Arlene Dávila is a recognized public intellectual focusing on questions of cultural equity and a leader in the field of Latinx and critical race studies. She is the author of six books focusing on Latinx cultural politics spanning the media, urban politics, museums, and contemporary art markets, all characterized by a rigorous global and political economic perspective. A Professor of Anthropology and American Studies, she is also the founding director of The Latinx Project.

Miriam Margarita Basilio Gaztambide is Associate Professor of Art History and Museum Studies at New York University. Between 2001-2005, she was a Curatorial Assistant in the Departments of Painting and Sculpture and Drawings at The Museum of Modern Art. There she co-curated Tempo (MoMAQNS 2002) and Caribbean and Latin American Art: MoMA at El Museo (organized with El Museo del Barrio, 2004). Her book Visual Propaganda, Exhibitions and the Spanish Civil War was published by Routledge in 2013. Retratos Hablados/Spoken Portraits, an artist’s book with an essay, was published by Mudito & Co. in 2020. Currently, she is writing a book on the history of MoMA’s modernist canon and the definition of “Latin American” art.

The Colloquium is the product of the generosity and continuing support of Roberta and Richard Huber, and we thank them heartily for making the current year’s activities possible.

Description:
This talk goes behind the scenes at the Royal Palace in seventeenth-century Madrid to reconstruct the life and work of a long-forgotten tailor who dressed the court of Philip IV and whose creations—immortalized in Diego Velázquez’s greatest works—shaped the look and legacy of Golden-Age Spain.

The Baroque has been conceived as one of art history’s foundational styles. This talk, in examining the transmission of prints from Europe to Latin America and their extensive colonial copying, instead reframes the Baroque in terms of form. Seeing the Baroque from a vantage point staked in Latin America and rearticulating it in terms of formal syntax and pictorial recombination has ramifications both for the ways we look at European art and, more broadly, for interrogating some of art history’s seminal historiographic assumptions.

Description: Alexander von Humboldt was arguably the most important naturalist of the 19th century. He lived for 90 years, published more than 36 books, traveled across three continents, and wrote well over 25,000 letters to an international network of colleagues and admirers. In 1804, after traveling almost five years in South America and Mexico, Humboldt spent exactly six weeks in the United States. Humboldt—through a series of lively exchanges of ideas about the arts, science, politics, and exploration with influential figures such as President Thomas Jefferson and artist Charles Willson Peale—shaped American perceptions of nature and the way American cultural identity became grounded in our relationship with the environment. This lecture examines the legacy of that short trip in American art and culture.

Abstract: This lecture explores how Miró and Dalí were promoted by their New York dealers, and how their approaches to the design and distribution of the ephemera that accompanied their exhibitions ultimately correlated to differences in their critical fortunes, especially as related to their paired exhibitions at the MoMA in 1941. Miró and his dealer Pierre Matisse represent a craftsman’s concern with paper and the prestige of a well-made publication; Dalí and his dealer Julien Levy represent a much closer connection with the surrealist use of and interest in ephemera. Both artists brought to their experiences in NYC the European avant-garde’s fascination with paper as a tool for promotion and controversy.