Transforming Images: New Mexican Santos in-between Worlds | Keynote

Please join us for a special two-day program bringing together artists, scholars, spiritual leaders, and community voices to explore the sacred images of New Mexican santeros that form the heart of the collection cared for by the FAC. This program is free and open to the public.

Keynote:

Claire Farago, Professor Emerita, University of Colorado Boulder

Who owns the past? From the mid-eighteenth century, in addition to importing religious art from Mexico, New Mexico produced its own altarpieces and individual devotional panels depicting Christ, the Virgin, and saints. The distinctiveness of New Mexican Christian art raises questions central to the social construction of meaning. The process of trying to account for cultural identity in a heterogeneous colonial society also raises issues of power and interpretative privilege. For the sacred is a contested category. No one needs reminders in today’s world of contentious religious fundamentalisms that one person’s sacred is another’s taboo. This talk articulates what is at stake regarding the contested interpretation of sacred objects through a case study of historical New Mexican Christian religious images. Studying the New Mexican material has led
me to consider cultural identity in a very basic way: how people
manipulate whatever material culture is available in their environment
to negotiate their relationship with the world.

Reception to follow in Smith Family Gallery.

Please also join us for Day 1 of Transforming Images: New Mexican Santos in-between Worlds.

This event is sponsored by the Paul Frederick Sheffer Memorial Fund for Roman Catholic Studies at Colorado College.