History of Hispanism: Spain and beyond

Curated by Richard Kagan, one of the most acclaimed experts on the topic of our century, this exhibition explores the meaning of “Hispanism” as a concept applied to different areas and its evolution.

Hispanism, especially as practiced in the United States, is a field in flux. Originally defined by scholarship devoted to the arts, literatures, and cultures of peninsular Spain, by the start of the twentieth century, influenced by the Pan-American movement, it broadened its reach to include Mexico and other parts of Spanish America. That trend continues today, so much so that Hispanism, as the current exhibition will explain, also embraces the study of hispanophone cultures in other parts of the world, including that of the United States.

The exhibition is made up of six different sections:

1. Spain’s Golden Age in the United States: Collecting the Spanish Old Masters (Ellen Prokop)
2. Architectural History of Early Modern Spain and Spanish America in the United States (Luis Gordo Peláez)
3. Pioneering Women Hispanists in the United States (Rebecca Teresi)
4. Spanish Golden Age Theater and Literary Hispanism (Amy Sheeran)
5. The “Spanish Idiom” and Spanish Virtuosity in America (Louise Stein)
6. Sea Changes in American Hispanism: New Inflows from the Caribbean, the Philippines, and the Harlem Renaissance in the Wake of the Spanish-American War (Amy Chang)

About the curator

Richard L. Kagan ( Newark, NJ, 1943) is Arthur O. Lovejoy Professor of History Emeritus and Academy Professor of History at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD. A specialist in the history of Spain and Colonial Spanish America, his most recent books include The Spanish Craze: America’s Fascination with the Hispanic World, 1779-1939 (2019) and The Inquisition’s Inquisitor: Henry Charles Lea of Philadelphia (2024).

This exhibition has been organized as part of the Triennial Conference of SIGA in Washington, D.C.