CINCINNATI, OH.- Treasures of the Spanish World explores the visual cultures of Spain and Latin America across 4,000 years, through some of the finest artworks from the Iberian Peninsula and Spanish America. The exhibition, organized in partnership with the Hispanic Society Museum & Library, is being presented at the Cincinnati Art Museum from October 25, 2019–January 19, 2020.

From Copper Age ceramics, medieval metalwork, Renaissance sculpture and portraits by Velázquez and Goya, to Mexican featherwork mosaics, Colombian lacquerware, rare early maps of the Americas and the light-suffused paintings of Sorolla at the turn of the twentieth century, these artworks manifest the richly layered cultures of Spain under Roman, Islamic and Christian rule and the Spanish influence in the Americas.

The Hispanic Society Museum & Library, widely acknowledged to house the greatest collection of Spanish and Latin American art and artifacts outside of Spain, has loaned its artworks for this traveling special exhibition while its 1908 Beaux Arts building in New York undergoes renovations. The Cincinnati Art Museum has the unique chance to exhibit the Hispanic Society’s finest examples of paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, manuscripts and documents. A significant number of these works have not before been exhibited outside of the Hispanic Society, and some have never before been exhibited.

Treasures of the Spanish World offers audiences an unprecedented survey of some of the great artistic traditions of Europe and the Americas. Peter Jonathan Bell, the Cincinnati Art Museum’s Associate Curator of European Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings, is curating the exhibition in Cincinnati.

“We aim not only to present exhibition visitors with artworks of the highest caliber and significance that sketch the outlines of some of the globe’s most vital artistic cultures, but also to bring these treasures and their stories to new audiences,” Bell said. The Cincinnati Art Museum will present all exhibition texts in English and Spanish.

The exhibition first appeared at the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, Spain, where it received wide international acclaim in 2017. It also traveled to the Museo del Palacio de Bella Artes in Mexico City and the Albuquerque Museum in New Mexico. After its presentation at the Cincinnati Art Museum, the exhibition will travel to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas.

The exhibition is accompanied by a lavishly-illustrated scholarly catalogue, Treasures from the Hispanic Society Museum & Library, edited by Mitchell A. Codding, Executive Director and President of the Hispanic Society.