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Dec 9, 2023
Picturing Race in Colonial Mexico
Genealogies of Modernity Episode 5
Summary
Race is sometimes treated as a biological fact. It is actually a modern invention. But for this concept to gain power, its logic had to be spread – and made visible. Art historian Ilona Katzew tells the story of how Spanish colonists of modern-day Mexico developed theories of blood purity and used the casta paintings – featuring family groups with differing skin pigmentations set in domestic scenes – to represent these theories as reality. She also shares the strange challenges of curating these paintings in the present, when the paintings’ insidious ideologies have been debunked, but when mixed-race viewers also appreciate images that testify to their presence in the past.
Researcher, writer, and episode producer: Christopher Nygren, Associate Professor, History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh
Featured Scholar: Ilona Katzew, Curator and Head of Latin American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Special thanks: Elise Lonich Ryan, Nayeli Riano, Jennifer Josten
For transcript, teaching aids, and other resources, click here.
Your Host
Zachary Davis
Zachary Davis is the host of Ministry of Ideas and Writ Large and the Editor-in-Chief of Radiant.