The untold chronicles of the looting and collecting of ancient Mesoamerican objects. This book traces the fascinating history of how and why ancient Mesoamerican objects have been collected. It begins with the pre-Hispanic antiquities that first entered European collections in the sixteenth century as gifts or seizures, continues through the rise of systematic collecting in Europe and the Americas during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and ends in 1940—the start of Europe’s art market collapse at the outbreak of World War II and the coinciding genesis of the large-scale art market for pre-Hispanic antiquities in the United States. Drawing upon archival resources and international museum collections, the contributors analyze the ways shifting patterns of collecting and taste—including how pre-Hispanic objects changed from being viewed as anthropological and scientific curiosities to collectible artworks—have shaped modern academic disciplines as well as public, private, institutional, and nationalistic attitudes toward Mesoamerican art. As many nations across the world demand the return of their cultural patrimony and ancestral heritage, it is essential to examine the historical processes, events, and actors that initially removed so many objects from their countries of origin.

This anthology of plays from the Spanish Golden Age brings together the work of canonical writers, female writers who are rapidly achieving canonical status, and lesser-known writers who have recently gained critical attention. It contains the full text of fifteen plays; an introduction to each play with information about the author, the work, performance issues, and current criticism; and glosses with definitions of difficult words and concepts. The extensive bibliography provides opportunities for further research.

The conference theme was dedicated to the study of the function of art in politics. The present edition compiles the 30 research works divided in 3 sub-topics: Poderes, Cuerpos y Espacios (Powers, Bodies and Spaces); Batallas por el Imaginario (Battles for the Imaginary) and Resistencia y Representación (Resistance and Representation).

Exploring art made in Latin America during the 1930s and 1940s, Hemispheric Integration argues that Latin America’s position within a global economic order was crucial to how art from that region was produced, collected, and understood. Niko Vicario analyzes art’s relation to shifting trade patterns, geopolitical realignments, and industrialization to suggest that it was in this specific era that the category of Latin American art developed its current definition. Focusing on artworks by iconic Latin American modernists such as David Alfaro Siqueiros, Joaquín Torres-García, Cândido Portinari, and Mario Carreño, Vicario emphasizes the materiality and mobility of art and their connection to commerce, namely the exchange of raw materials for manufactured goods from Europe and the United States. An exceptional examination of transnational culture, this book provides a new model for the study of Latin American art.

This book consists of a collection of essays by Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska in their first English translation, and a critical introduction. The highly engaging essays explore the lives of seven transformational figures for Mexican feminism. This includes Frida Kahlo, Maria Izquierdo, and Nahui Olin, three outstanding artists of the cultural renaissance of the early twentieth century, and Nellie Campobello, Elena Garro, Rosario Castellanos, and Pita Amor, forerunner writers and poets whose works laid a path for Mexican women writers in the later twentieth century. Poniatowska’s essays discuss their fervent activity, interactions with other prominent figures, details and intricacies about their specific works, their scandalous and irreverent activities to draw attention to their craft, and specific revelations about their lives. The extensive critical introduction surveys the early feminist movement and Mexican cultural history, explores how Mexico became a more closed society by the mid-twentieth century, and suggests further reading and films. This book will be of interest both to the general reader and to scholars interested in feminist/gender studies, Mexican literary and cultural studies, Latin American women writers, the cultural renaissance, translation, and film studies.

María Izquierdo (1902–1955) and Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) were the first two Mexican women artists to achieve international recognition. During the height of the Mexican muralist movement, they established successful careers as easel painters and created work that has become an integral part of Mexican modernism. Although the iconic Kahlo is now more famous, the two artists had comparable reputations during their lives. Both were regularly included in major exhibitions of Mexican art, and they were invariably the only women chosen for the most important professional activities and honors. In a deeply informed study that prioritizes critical analysis over biographical interpretation, Nancy Deffebach places Kahlo’s and Izquierdo’s oeuvres in their cultural context, examining the ways in which the artists participated in the national and artistic discourses of postrevolutionary Mexico. Through iconographic analysis of paintings and themes within each artist’s oeuvre, Deffebach discusses how the artists engaged intellectually with the issues and ideas of their era, especially Mexican national identity and the role of women in society. In a time when Mexican artistic and national discourses associated the nation with masculinity, Izquierdo and Kahlo created images of women that deconstructed gender roles, critiqued the status quo, and presented more empowering alternatives for women. Deffebach demonstrates that, paradoxically, Kahlo and Izquierdo became the most successful Mexican women artists of the modernist period while most directly challenging the prevailing ideas about gender and what constitutes important art.