Luisa Elena Alcalá is Associate Professor in the Department of the History and Theory of Art of the Universidad Autónoma of Madrid. Before moving to Spain, she studied at Yale College and obtained her PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts (New York University, 1998). Her research focuses on Latin American colonial art, especially Mexican painting of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and its relationship to issues of religious practices and experience, taste, and patronage. An ongoing research interest has been the role of the Jesuits in Latin America as major players in an art history of circulation in the Early Modern period. Related to this, is the recent article “«…Fátiga, y cuidados, y gastos, y regalos…» Aspectos de la circulación de la escultura napolitana a ambos lados del Atlántico,” in Libros de la Corte. Monográfico 5 (2017) (https://revistas.uam.es/librosdelacorte/issue/view/678). Prof. Alcalá has held fellowships from CASVA (National Gallery, Washington DC) and Dumbarton Oaks (Harvard University). She has edited the volume Fundaciones Jesuíticas en Iberoamérica and co-edited, with Jonathan Brown, Painting in Latin America. More recently, she was one of the co-curators (along with Jaime Cuadriello, Paula Mues Orts and Ilona Katzew) of the itinerant exhibition Painted in Mexico. Pinxit Mexici, 1700-1790 held at LACMA, Fomento Cultural Banamex (Mexico City), and the MET in 2017-18.
