Behind Closed Doors: Power and Privilege at Home in Spanish America

FAIN: GI-50476-12

Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, NY 11238-6052)
Rich Aste (Project Director: January 2012 to April 2015)

Implementation of a traveling exhibition, a scholarly catalog, and online materials that explore the private life of creole and indigenous elites in Spanish colonial America and how identity, social status, and ambition were communicated by the art and luxury objects they chose to display in their homes.

The Brooklyn Museum requests an implementation grant in the amount of $354,356 to support the final planning stages, the installation and travel to subsequent venues of the exhibition, "Behind Closed Doors: Power and Privilege at Home in Spanish America" (working title). The overall objectives of the exhibition are to provide a broad New World context for the ostentatious consumption and display as a social strategy for negotiating status and establishing identity in the Americas; to expand the public's understanding of Spanish elite culture to include indigenous, creole and European perspectives; and to present a wealthy New World social class who in the 19th century, after 300 years of political oppression by the Spanish crown, played a key role in determining the course of Peruvian and Mexican history. The exhibition will be accompanied by educational and public programming as well as a catalogue.

Associated Products

Behind Closed Doors: Art in the Spanish American Home 1492-1898 (Catalog)
Title: Behind Closed Doors: Art in the Spanish American Home 1492-1898
Author: Suzanne Stratton
Author: Richard Aste
Author: Mia L. Bagneris
Author: Michael A. Brown
Author: Jorge Rivas
Abstract: Published in conjunction with an exhibition organized by and held at the Brooklyn Museum, Sept. 20, 2013-Jan. 12, 2014. Also held at the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, Feb. 16-May 18, 2014, New Orleans Museum of Art, Jun. 20-Sept. 21, 2014, and the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Oct. 17, 2014-Jan. 11, 2015. "Behind Closed Doors is the first major exhibition in the United States to explore the private lives and interiors of Spain's New World elite from 1492 through the nineteenth century, focusing on the house as a principal repository of fine and decorative art. Through approximately 160 paintings, sculptures, prints, textiles, and decorative art objects, this exhibition presents for the first time American, European, and Asian luxury goods from everyday life as signifiers of the faith, wealth, taste, and socio-racial standing of their consumers. The exhibition explores themes including representations of the indigenous and Creole elite, rituals in the home, the sala de estrado (women's sitting room), the bedchamber, and social identity through material culture." --Brooklyn Museum website.
Year: 2013
Primary URL: http://www.worldcat.org/title/behind-closed-doors-art-in-the-spanish-american-home-1492-1898/oclc/825046947&referer=brief_results
Catalog Type: Exhibition Catalog
Publisher: Monacelli Press

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