Press Room: Press Release

The Arts of the Missions of Northern New Spain: 1600-1821

will open in the Cowden Gallery of the San Antonio Museum of Art on Saturday, October 17, 2009.   This exhibition is the first to explore the rich artistic legacy of the Franciscan and Jesuit mission churches in northern Mexico and the American Southwest. The exhibition will include approximately 115 objects from collections in Mexico, the United States, and Europe, including many from the missions themselves, most of which have never left their original locations. Nearly 70 per cent of the objects in the exhibition underwent major conservation efforts in order to be included. The exhibition will run through Sunday, January 3, 2010.

“While Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries (the most successful exhibition on Mexican art ever shown in San Antonio) celebrated art from the great urban centers of Mexico culture, this exhibition is about art from the vast provinces of what today is northern Mexico and the Southwest U.S.,” notes Marion Oettinger, Jr, director of the San Antonio Museum of Art. “This exhibition is really focused on the heritage that shaped San Antonio.”

PROGRAMMING

The San Antonio Museum of Art is collaborating with the San Antonio Missions to present two symposia on the missionary art of Mexico and the United States on October 17 (the exhibition opening) and November 7, 2009. The earlier symposium will be hosted at the San Antonio Museum of Art and focus on “Negotiating the Missionary Frontier: Jesuit and Franciscan Art of Northern New Spain”. November’s symposium will be hosted at Mission San José and focus on “Defining the Spanish Borderlands: Perspectives on the Massacre of San Sabá Mission”. In addition, SAMA will offer family activities, performances and more throughout the exhibition’s run.

 

MISSIONARY ART

A fundamental part of Spain’s colonization of the New World, the missionary enterprise was integral to the Crown’s effort.  

From shortly after the Conquest until Mexico obtained its independence from Spain in 1821, hundreds of missions were founded by the Franciscans and Jesuits in northern reaches of the Viceroyalty, in present-day states of Durango, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Tamaulipas, Sinaloa, Sonora, and Baja California in Mexico; and California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Florida in the United States.  Nearly all of these Franciscan and Jesuit missions were richly decorated with paintings, sculpture, furniture, liturgical objects and liturgical vestments which have received little critical public attention.  Many of the works were made by the most prominent artists in Mexico City, Puebla and elsewhere in New Spain, while others came from Europe and as far away as Asia.  Indigenous artists also made works of art found in the missions.  In short, there are extensive visual remains of a spiritual and cultural undertaking that was, although part of an immense worldwide effort, nearly unique to the New World. 

The fully illustrated catalogue in Spanish and English will contain essays by prominent historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, and art historians for the U.S. and Mexico. 

They discuss the art and architecture of the missions; native and pre-Columbian art and cultures and the reception of European-based art brought to the missions; contrasts in native and Spanish conceptions of space and their impact on Spanish-Indian relations at the missions; the cultural and linguistic diversity of indigenous people of northern New Spain and their effect on missionaries’ efforts; and the later impact of the missions on art, literature, and film in the U.S. and Mexico.