Shifting Tides: Art in the 18th-Century Caribbean

The Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation has given a grant of $25,000 in support of Shifting Tides: Art in the 18th-Century Caribbean, a symposium and study day to be hosted at the Winterthur Museum in April 2023. The organizers note that, “Histories of colonial and viceregal American art tend to privilege art produced in continental spaces as they came to be organized as nation states, overlooking the interrelatedness of early Caribbean and continental colonies and the significance of the Caribbean region.” This ground-breaking event, which will bring together scholars, conservators, community partners, artists, and curators, seeks to shed new light on how the Caribbean basin, spanning the coastal areas as well as the islands which lie in the Caribbean Sea, was a central space for the making and circulation of European wealth.