Hispanic Society Museum & Library Launches Goya Research Center

The palette of the most important Spanish painter of the late 18th and early 19th centuries could be merry, mysterious, melancholy, or monstrous. He laced his work with searing social commentary and powerfully brought to life the cost and tragedy of war. He influenced artists including Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, and Käthe Kollwitz. Yet there has been a lack of scholarly research in America on Francisco Goya, one of the last Old Masters and one of the first modern artists.

Enter the Goya Research Center. Located in the Hispanic Society Museum & Library (HSM&L) in Manhattan — which houses four paintings, 13 drawings, and 800 prints by Goya — the recently opened research center will study the artist's works in museums across New York (including the Frick Collection and the Brooklyn Museum), cultivate research projects that explore provenance, produce physical and online publications, stage an annual symposium, and fund a fellowship program for tomorrow's Goya scholars. The center — which also will create a virtual Goya museum from the New York museum collections — will produce a series of programs and exhibitions through 2028, which marks the bicentenary anniversary of his death.

The Goya Research Center is run by HSM&L director and Goya scholar Guillaume Kientz, a former curator of Spanish and Latin American art at the Louvre Museum who produced an international symposium on the artist in 2013. Kientz has assembled a committee of museum professionals and academics that will meet several times a year to discuss this research and preservation project, which will include participation from American museums outside of New York.

GRoW is delighted to support the Goya Research Center and to continue to champion the HSM&L, which researches and promotes the art and cultures of Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries.