Keynote Speaker: Clara Bargellini Cioni

"Mexican altarpieces: interactions in time and space"
Lecture Sponsored by HESCAH
 

Dr. Clara Bargellini is a preeminent scholar in the field of colonial Latin American art history. Her work focuses on the art of colonial Mexico, otherwise known as the Viceroyalty of New Spain. Dr. Bargellini received her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and her Masters and Doctorate degrees in Art History from Harvard University. She has lived in Mexico since 1972, and has worked in the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas (IIE) at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) since 1979. Dr. Bargellini is also professor of art history in the Colegio de Historia and in the Posgrado de Historia del Arte in the Department of Filosofía y Letras at UNAM. She has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Zacatecas, Chihuahua and Sonora, and in the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University as well as the Universities of Chicago and Pennsylvania, among others.

Among her numerous publications are books and articles about the art and architecture of the north of the Viceroyalty of New Spain. Some titles include: La catedral de Chihuahua (1984), La arquitectura de la plata: iglesias monumentales del centro-norte de México, 1640-1752 (1991), y La catedral de Saltillo: tiempo y espacio de un acervo (2005). She has also published on the painting and sculpture of New Spain, examining the function of art in the cult of Our Lady of Sorrows in El retablo de la Virgen de los Dolores (1993). Dr. Bargellini has also focused her career on the conservation of art as an awardee of the Kress Foundation in Florence after its founding in 1966. She is one of the founders and members of the advising committee of the Diagnostic Laboratory of Works of Art of the IIE, and has published in collaboration with other disciplines and members of communities who face conservation issues in their cultural and artistic patrimony. Those titles include Historia y arte en un pueblo rural: San Bartolomé, hoy Valle de Allende, Chihuahua (1998); Chihuahua, caminos del pasado, el sur del estado (2000); Misiones para Chihuahua (2004).

In addition, Dr. Bargellini has always been interested in methodological and historiographic issues, especially in relation to her work as a professor. She has published essays on the historiography of the art of New Spain and on collecting practices and the reception of the art of the same region, especially as it has manifested in the United States. In recent years, she has undertaken and promoted international and multinational approaches to the art of New Spain. She coordinated Arte y arquitectura virreinales en Latinoamérica: visiones comparativas, a special edition of the journal entitled Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas (1999). She has also contributed articles to The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences and the Arts, 1540-1773 (1999); Athanasius Kircher, Il museo del mondo (2001); Fundaciones jesuíticas en Iberoamérica (2002); and Time and Place: The Geohistory of Art (2005).

Dr. Bargellini’s interests also extend to the museum sphere in which she has also collaborated on numerous curatorial projects with colleagues and students. Those projects include Clasicismo en México (1990), Arte y mística del barroco (1994), Cristóbal de Villalpando (1997), Copper as Canvas (1999), Painting a New World (2004), Las artes en América Latina 1492-1820 (2006), El arte de las misiones del norte de la Nueva España 1600-1821 (2009).

Currently, she is working on projects about the art and architecture in northern colonial Mexico with an interest in the art of New Spain as part of Renaissance, Baroque, and Neoclassical culture. She is collaborating on a project on the History of Art of Mexico of the IIE at UNAM.

Email: cioni@unam.mx
Website: http://www.esteticas.unam.mx/clara_bargellini