: Throughout the ages, every culture has used portraits to record
personages, position, passages and pomp. Few, if any, are more
expressive than the Latin American portraiture on view in the
extraordinary exhibition "Retratos: 2000 Years of Latin American
Portraits." The likenesses are eminently readable and reveal much
about the climate in which they were painted.
"Retratos" is on view at El Museum del Barrio through March 20.
"Retratos" Family Day is Saturday, February 12, from 12 to 4 pm,
with free admission.
The sweeping show is lively and grandly colorful; the pictures
fairly dance off the walls. It encompasses a range of 115 objects
from as early as the Moche, an advanced pre-Columbian
civilization that flourished along the northern coast of Peru
from about 100 AD, to paintings created as recently as 2001. The
exhibition is arranged to allow a visitor to follow the
development of the art and history described as Latin American.
The term is a huge umbrella and the scope of the exhibition is
equally vast.
