The Meadows Museum at SMU in Dallas will open "Spectacles of Power and Faith: Colonial South American Art from the Thoma Foundation" on August 23, 2026. The exhibition features 63 rare paintings and copper miniatures from the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation, created between 1600 and 1850 across present-day Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador. Co-curated by Adam Jasienski and Verónica Muñoz-Nájar, the show is organized into thematic sections and includes an immersive chapel installation with music and scent. After closing in Dallas on January 24, 2027, it will travel to the Princeton University Art Museum and the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame.
This exhibition matters because it represents a significant institutional effort to elevate early modern South American painting from historical marginalization. The Meadows Museum, traditionally focused on Peninsular Spanish art, is expanding its geographical scope to address the syncretic visual culture of colonial South America, highlighting the contributions of Indigenous, European, and African artists. The accompanying bilingual catalogue and the multisensory chapel installation underscore a scholarly and curatorial commitment to contextualizing these works within their original religious and social frameworks, potentially reshaping how colonial art is understood and displayed in major U.S. museums.