Show Its art is in the right place Reed Johnson Los Angeles Times Sometimes an art shows show's location can be as powerful and illuminating as the actual works on display A perfectly chosen venue can transport us in time breathe life into inanimate objects and turn a static diorama of the past or present into 3 D experiential reality Its It's impossible to stroll the Vatican museums or orthe orthe orthe the admiring the Renaissance masters without feeling the presence of a beneficently smiling Medici or Savonarola's baleful glare Conversely how many critics have fretted about whether Frank Gehry's shimmering Guggenheim Bilbao might be upstaging the the i than less lustrous artworks inside it like a willful at a Hollywood cocktail party Its It's hard to imagine a better fit between a mise-en- mise scene and its subject than the aptly named Revelations a vast exhibition ibi ti on 0 can era colonial-era art that will arrive in Los Angeles in August Currently its it's installed in resplendent surroundings at the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso smack in the middle of this convulsive metropolis of 86 million the second stop in a trek that began last year at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Made up of works from 13 countries brings together art from throughout the Spanish- Spanish speaking former colonies plus formerly Portuguese- Portuguese ruled Brazil which were divided into administrative viceroys but functioned as interlocking parts of an empire This approach allows the curators to draw thematic and stylistic links from Cuba all the way to the Rio de la Plata in South America Many 0 b j are ing one-of-a-kind one even an century sculpture 0 of Our Lady of Sorrows from Ecuador her face framed by a brilliantly fabricated gold black-and-gold shroud a Guatemalan sculpture of the infant Christ crucified a tear dripping from one child- child sized eye cye a sculpture of St. St Jerome his musculature and the folds of fabric around his stomach rendered with like Bernini-like virtuosity What LA viewers wont won't experience alas unless they hustle down here before June 24 is the revelatory perspective of seeing framed by the venerable San Ildefonso museum its antique stone colonnades contemplative courtyards and acidly satirical murals by Jose Clemente Orozco part of Mexico's holy trinity of modem modern mural painters whose other members were Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Orozco's murals were added in the and their depictions of arrogant capitalists literally trampling over the poor expressed the quasi-Marxist quasi sentiments of Mexico's post- post revolutionary government They provide an ironic visual commentary on the treasures contained in San Ildefonso puts an up up- tempo spin on the colonial eras era's intercultural give and take This exhibition says the museums museum's Web site demonstrates the arising of ofa a new culture vigorous and potent the mestizo culture That's true as far as it goes Mestizo or race mixed identity has been a defining feature of Latin American society for centuries Not only Indian but also African and Asian influences found their way into colonial Latin American art via Spain and Portugal's commerce with the Far East |