San Antonio Museum of Art

The Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art

Cherub (Querubin)
Artist unknown, Spanish
18th century
carved and painted wood with glass eyes
16 1/2 x 10 1/4 x 6 3/4 in.
San Antonio Museum of Art, gift of Peter C. Cecere

By the middle of the sixteenth century, Spanish Catholics had introduced the idea of angels, archangels, devils, and other mythical characters to much of the Americas. This charming Spanish cherub is of a type similar to those taken to Mexico, Peru, and other parts of Latin America, where they were copied and reinterpreted until they became more American than European. Originally, this piece was polychromed and probably supported a shelf or column inside a church or chapel.

The San Antonio Museum of Art has one of the most comprehensive collections of Latin American art in the United States. Housed in the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Latin American Art, which opened to the public in 1998, the Center offers an overview of over 3,000 years of artistic expression from Mexico, Central and South America, and many countries of the Caribbean.

SAMA’s pre-Columbian collection is comprised of an excellent overview of art prior to the arrival of Europeans. Stone, ceramic, and metal objects from the Olmec of Mesoamerica and Chavin of the Andean region are among the earliest pieces on display. Later cultures, such as the Maya, Aztec, Zapotec, and Mixtec of Mesoamerica and the Nazca, Chimu, and Inca of Peru are prominently represented as well.

The Museum’s Viceregal/ Republican Gallery is comprised mainly of religious paintings and sculpture from Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, and elsewhere in Latin America. Secular art in this gallery includes portraits, furniture, and other decorative objects.

In 1985, two major collections of Latin American folk art, belonging to the late Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller and Robert K. Winn, were donated, creating one of the world’s most important repositories of this type of material. The collection now numbers more than 7,000 objects representing a broad range of functions, types, and materials dating from the eighteenth century to the present, with an emphasis on examples from the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 2006, the Museum received an equally important collection of folk art from Spain, Ecuador, Brazil, Mexico, and other parts of Latin America. Known as the Cecere Collection, this extraordinary assemblage of over 350 pieces of folk art fills in many gaps in our earlier collection.

The fourth part of the Latin American Collection is Modern/Contemporary art, featuring most of the great artists of the twentieth century. Mexicans Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, Miguel Covarrubias, Chilean Roberto Matta, Uruguayan Joaquin Torres-Garcia, Guatemalan Carlos Merida and many others are on permanent display.

Finally, the Golden Gallery of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center features changing exhibitions of Latin American art, mostly from the permanent collection. These small exhibitions rotate every four to six months.