Verónica Muñoz-Nájar Luque Joins the Thoma Foundation

In March 2023, the Thoma Foundation welcomed Verónica Muñoz-Nájar Luque, Ph.D. as our new Curatorial Fellow of the Arts of the Spanish Americas. We asked Verónica to help us get to know her a bit better! 

Tell us a little about yourself. What did you do before joining the Thoma Foundation team? I have spent the past six years pursuing my Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley. Before this, I earned my M.A. at the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, and was also a curatorial intern in the Latin American Art Departments at Los Angeles County Art Museum and the Museo de Arte de Lima.

Can you explain a little bit about the work you’ll be doing at TF? As the Curatorial Fellow of the Arts of the Spanish Americas Collection, my role is twofold: I oversee documentation and research of the TF extensive collection of colonial art, and coordinate outreach and collaboration with museums and scholars to give visibility to the Collection.

Do you have a favorite piece of artwork in the collection? That is a very difficult question! One of my favorite pieces is our only work on piedra de Huamanga, an Andean alabaster, which still preserves its polychromy and inlaid black pearls. It represents the Baptism of Christ.

You were the very first Marilynn Thoma Predoctoral Fellow in the Art of the Spanish Americas! What was that experience like?  The Marilynn Thoma Fellowship was integral in facilitating my dissertation research within a diverse range of archives, museums and private collections in Bolivia, Peru, Italy and Spain. Furthermore, Dr. Katherine McAllen, who was the Thoma postdoctoral fellow at the time, and I organized the “Congreso de Arte Virreinal,” an international symposium held in Lima which brought together 35 viceregal art scholars from Latin America, Europe, Asia and the United States. It was a terrific opportunity to meet with colonial art scholars and talk about the state of the field.