April 30 – June 13, 2010

From the seventeenth century on, Spanish friars in New Mexico imported religious sculptures and paintings from Europe and Mexico to adorn newly built mission churches. By the second half of the eighteenth century, several New Mexican artists were transforming native woods and other materials into bultos, retablos, hide paintings and more in a local version of the Baroque style.   The exhibition examines 300 years of this traditional, but nearly forgotten, art form.