Thoma Foundation Announces 2025 Art of the Spanish Americas Grant and Fellowship Recipients

The Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation is thrilled to announce the 2025 recipients of its Art of the Spanish Americas Conservation Grants, Exploratory Travel Award, Marilynn Thoma Pre- and Post-Doctoral Fellowships, and Research and Travel Awards.

This year, the Foundation has awarded $160,000 in fellowships and grants to support scholarly research, fieldwork, and conservation projects that advance the study of the art of the Spanish Americas. Inspired by the Foundation’s collection of more than 240 works from South America and the Caribbean, dating from the 17th to 19th centuries, these awards promote projects that deepen our understanding of the rich visual culture of the Spanish Americas and contribute meaningfully to the preservation of its artistic heritage.

This year’s fellows and award winners were chosen by a jury of experts and selected from a highly competitive pool of international applicants based on their academic accomplishments, scholarly commitment to the art of the Spanish Americas, and project merit. Please visit our Art of the Spanish Americas Grants and Fellowships website to learn more about our individual awards and giving process. 

Our 2025 award recipients are as follows, in alphabetical order. Congratulations, all!

CONSERVATION GRANT

Arzobispado de Arequipa, Conservation of two monumental paintings of the Church of Lari in the Colca Valley

The project seeks to preserve two of the largest viceregal paintings in the region of Arequipa: The Coronation of the Virgin and The Lord of the Earthquakes. Each measuring approximately 20 feet in width, the 18th-century canvases are housed in the Church of Lari in the Colca Valley, which suffered significant structural damage during a recent earthquake. Conservator Franz Grupp will perform the treatment of the works, and the initiative will not only focus on the physical conservation of these monumental works but will also include a scholarly publication detailing their materiality, painting techniques, and historical context, contributing to the broader understanding and safeguarding of Peru’s rich viceregal artistic heritage.

CustodiArte Conservation Laboratory, Conservation and research of the viceregal painting The Marriage of Mary and Joseph

CustodiArte Laboratory, led by conservators Paola Rojo and Gabriela Doña, will launch the conservation and comprehensive study of the viceregal painting The Marriage of Mary and Joseph. This significant colonial work forms part of a larger cycle on the Life of the Virgin, housed in the historic Oratory of Acuña in the Valley of Catamarca, northern Argentina. In addition to restoring the painting, the project will include an international mist-lining workshop designed to train Latin American conservators in advanced structural conservation techniques for viceregal canvases. This initiative seeks to safeguard cultural heritage and build capacity for the long-term preservation of colonial artworks across the region.

EXPLORATORY TRAVEL AWARD

Ana Girard, The Visual Culture of Solitude

Ana’s project will investigate the visual culture of solitude and the figure of the hermit in the early modern Hispanic world, with particular attention to the contradictions between the idealized notion of seclusion and the material and geographic conditions that complicated it. The project explores how solitude was imagined, represented, and experienced through an analysis of religious artworks and architectural spaces. With the Exploratory Grant, Ana will conduct preliminary research in Lima, Arequipa, and Cusco, visiting convents, museums, and churches to examine relevant artworks and archival materials that will inform her dissertation.

MARILYNN THOMA PRE-DOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP

Victoria Rodríguez do Campo, Pervivencias errantes: The religious symbolic universe as a visual catalog in the transition between the Viceroyalty and the Republic (Río de la Plata, first half of the 19th century)

Victoria will study the visual survivals of the religious symbolic universe in the transitional period between the Viceroyalty and the Republic. She claims that religious art continued after the independence revolutions and that its symbolic universe became a fragmentary, yet effective, visual catalog for local politics. Victoria will conduct research for her dissertation in archives, libraries, museums, and churches in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Spain, and Italy.

MARILYNN THOMA POST-DOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP

Dr. Andrés de Leo, Along the Pastoral and Political Path of Governance of Bishop Manuel de Mollinedo y Angulo

Andrés’ project analyzes the artistic and political legacy of Manuel de Mollinedo, Bishop of Cusco from 1673 to 1699, a key figure in the city’s reconstruction after the 1650 earthquake. Through the analysis of historical documents and a survey of the region’s churches, this project aims to identify the artworks linked to Mollinedo’s administration and understand how art not only promoted devotion but also served as a tool to consolidate ecclesiastical and political power during a period of dynastic crisis in the Spanish Empire.

Dr. Francisco Mamani Fuentes, Beyond Silver: Potosí and the Social and Economic Networks in Artistic Production (1640-1760)

Francisco’s project examines the flourishing of artistic production in Potosí, one of the Spanish Empire’s most important mining centers. Positioned at the intersection of immense wealth and artistic achievement, as well as labor exploitation and environmental collapse, the study investigates the economic and social conditions that enabled a major artistic boom during a period of declining silver output. By focusing on this historical paradox, Francisco seeks to offer a more nuanced understanding of Potosí’s complex legacy.

Dr. Magdalena Pereira, “Con la luna plena en la cima del cielo estamos”: Traveling Iconographies in the Franciscan Doctrinas of San Antonio de Charcas, 17th–19th Centuries (Peru, Chile, and Bolivia)

Magdalena’s project explores the interconnection between visual culture, preaching, and music in the Indigenous Franciscan missions of Colca (Peru), Altos de Arica (Chile), and Potosí (Bolivia). Through historical and iconographic analysis, the project investigates missionary strategies in the region and their broader influence on evangelization practices in frontier territories. Special attention is given to the roles of comuneros (community members), curacas (Indigenous leaders), and mayordomas (female stewards) in shaping and sustaining these dynamics.

RESEARCH AND TRAVEL AWARD

Dr. Ilona Katzew, The Carved and Luminous World of Missionary Art from South America

Ilona’s project focuses on a group of under-recognized decorative-art objects created within the context of missionary activity in South America (c. 1700–1850). Ranging from boxes, trunks, and measuring cups to imposing Spanish-style cabinets and writing desks, many inlaid with luminous shells, these objects are paradigmatic of an entirely new process of symbolization following the conquest. The project will delineate the production centers, study and catalogue these objects while devising a more sensitive analytical interdisciplinary methodology that starts with the objects and their makers and considers various historical records and voices.

Lucia Galaretto, Extraction Forms: Technologies and epistemologies at the Casa Real de Moneda Circular (Potosí, c.1773)

Lucia’s project aims to historicize the conditions that enabled the production of Potosí’s Casa Real de Moneda Circular and the conditions of production that the building itself brought about. Rather than focusing on the transfer of architectural and urban design ideas from Spain into Peru, this project shows how the tensions between new technological imperatives and local, social, political, and technical conditions shaped the project.

Dr. Sara González Castrejón, Endangered Mission Chapels in the Andes North of Lima (Huayhuash and Western Mountain Ranges) from the Conquest to the Creation of Republican Peru

Sara’s project seeks to document rural mission chapels located in the Huayhuash and Western Mountain ranges of northern Lima. These chapels, largely unknown beyond their immediate communities, feature rich colonial artistic programs, including murals, sculpted and painted façades, coffered ceilings, wooden choirs, and Baroque altarpieces. The project will inventory and catalog these artworks while also examining how evangelization strategies in the region evolved, particularly during the reformation efforts led by Archbishop Toribio de Mogrovejo and the 17th-century anti-idolatry campaigns of Bartolomé Lobo Guerrero and Pedro de Villagómez Vivanco.