This anthology centers on the visual representation of woman in early modern Latin America, that is, the social and cultural construction and definition of female identity as evidenced by the art document. Artists in this period were collectively aware of a vocabulary of gender that could be tailored to deliver varying messages about the position of women in vice regal culture and society. This volume is organized not in the predictable linear framework, by periods and centuries, but rather by the realization that throughout much of this period, Spanish authorities and others envisaged the Spanish colonies of the Americas in gendered terms. Proffered as the female body, the “New” (virginal by implication) World was at differing times adored, pursued, courted, seduced, defiled, exploited, reviled, and denounced by those (males) who encountered “her.” This mentality is born out in the various forms of female representation that are discussed in this fully illustrated book. Contributors include: C. Cody Barteet, María Elena Bernal-García, Magali M. Carrera, Carol E. Damian, Carolyn Dean, Catherine R. DiCesare, Lori Boornazian Diel, Kelly Donahue-Wallace, Ray Hernandez-Duran, Andrea Lepage, Kellen Kee McIntyre, Penny Morrill, Elizabeth Q. Perry, Richard E. Phillips, Michael J. Schreffler, and Christopher C. Wilson. ERRATUM TO CHAPTER 7 Ray Hernández-Durán, “El Encuentro de Cortés y Moctezuma: The Betrothal of Two Worlds in Eighteenth-Century New Spain” (pp. 181–206). On page 194, second paragraph, third sentence, should read: “Marina’s absence in the encounter painting, where she normally mediates contact between the men, emphasizes the phallogocentric aspect of the historic meeting.” The original phrasing, using the pivotal term, ‘phallogocentric’ (a reference to a gendered form of exchange or communication) was changed to ‘phallus-centered,’ which not only alters a central idea in the argument, but actually has nothing to do with the image in question.

"It deals witb a distinguished career which led the Colombian artist from her early stage of "windows" and "doors" to a series of "atmospheres"--In which she seems to leap through the frames of her earlier paintings to find herself before the light that is on the other side and was merely hinted at before. The white canvases of her "atmospheres" - luminous, sparkling and full of matter - in turn fulfill their cycle, opening the way for a further stage which is marked by the recuperatian of the object and a new and fresh approach to nature.

Catalog of a travelling exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art of Latin America, Organization of American States, Washington, D.C., El Museo del Barrio, New York City, N.Y., Galería Caribe, San Juan, P.R. in 1988.