60 Masterworks from Puerto Rico on Tour

Puerto Rico’s remarkable Museo de Arte de Ponce (MAP) has generated a large traveling exhibition, “The Sense of Beauty: Six Centuries of Painting from Museo de Arte de Ponce.” Its organizing partner — and the first of six U.S. museums on the show’s tour — is the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Their collaboration makes sense given that both institutions were founded by individual collectors in the late 1950s and then opened to the public in 1965. Moreover, the project was conceived and developed by Iraida Rodríguez-Negrón, a MAP curator who began her career at the Meadows.

“The Sense of Beauty”
Meadows Museum, Dallas, Texas
meadowsmuseumdallas.org
through June 22, 2025

Located in an elegant city on the southern coast of Puerto Rico, MAP is the largest art museum in the Caribbean region thanks to its permanent collection of more than 4,000 objects. Its 1965 building designed by the modernist architect Edward Durell Stone has been undergoing major repairs since 2020, when a series of earthquakes occurred offshore. MAP has remained visible, however, mounting exhibitions in its annex building and lending pieces generously for projects around the world.

On view in Dallas now are 60 MAP masterworks created by European, American, and Puerto Rican painters who worked between the 16th century and today. They include religious pieces by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Peter Paul Rubens, and Anthony van Dyck; historical and mythical scenes by Jean-Léon Gérôme and Angelica Kauffmann; portraits by Joshua Reynolds and Elisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun; landscapes by Claude Lorrain and Gustave Courbet; and genre scenes by William-Adolphe Bouguereau and James Tissot. Particularly famous is the work illustrated above, Frederic Leighton’s “Flaming June,” which MAP founder Luis A. Ferré bought in London when almost everyone in England had forgotten about Victorian art. “The Sense of Beauty” also contains a group of Puerto Rican works, including devotional images by the much-admired 18th-century painter José Campeche y Jordán.

The Meadows is an international leader in Spanish art, so MAP is sending it major pieces by El Greco, Jusepe de Ribera, Francisco de Goya, Raimundo de Madrazo y Garreta, and Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida. Meadows curator Patricia Manzano Rodríguez says she will install them “alongside works in our permanent collection, where they can complement each other and spark dialogues.” MAP is also providing two wooden sculptures by 17th-century artists Pedro de Mena and José de Mora.

In appreciation, the Meadows will loan to Ponce, once its building reopens, Diego Velázquez’s renowned Female Figure (Sibyl with Tabula Rasa). An expert on Spanish art, Manzano Rodríguez will give a public lecture on May 1 about the Spanish queen consort Mariana of Austria, who is represented in MAP’s portrait by Jean Bautista Martínez del Mazo.

After “The Sense of Beauty” closes at Dallas, it will move to the Brigham Young University Museum of Art (Provo, Utah); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Oklahoma City Museum of Art; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (Hartford); and Cincinnati Art Museum. A bilingual catalogue accompanies the exhibition.

View fine art auctions, exhibitions, and more events by the month on our calendar page at FineArtConnoisseur.com – updated daily!