Converging cultures

de Diana Fane

With the conquest of Mexico by Cortez and of Peru by Pizarro in the sixteenth century, two great American civilizations were brought under the control of the Spanish crown. The arrival in the newly taken territories of settlers from Spain forced an encounter between highly sophisticated cultures that had developed independently for thousands of years. In the course of the Spanish occupation of Mexico (New Spain) and Peru for three centuries, this confrontation of divergent ways of seeing and experiencing the world gave rise to new Latin American cultural traditions. Using as examples a selection of works from the collection of The Brooklyn Museum, Converging Cultures: Art & Identity in Spanish America documents these cultural continuities and transformations as evidenced in illustrated books, painting, sculpture, furniture, textiles, and other artifacts of everyday life in Spanish America from the Precolumbian period to the nineteenth century. These expressive and beautiful works testify to the strength and scope of Latin American creativity through several centuries of upheaval and renewal.