Contested Visions in the Spanish Colonial World examines the significance of indigenous peoples within the artistic landscape of colonial Latin America. The exhibition offers a comparative view of the two principal viceroyalties of Spanish America—Mexico and Peru—from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Under colonial rule, Amerindians were not a passive or homogenous group but instead commissioned art for their communities and promoted specific images of themselves as a polity. By taking into consideration the pre-Columbian (Inca and Aztec) origins of these two vast geopolitical regions and their continuities and ruptures over time, Contested Visions offers an arresting perspective on how art and power intersected in the Spanish colonial world. The exhibition is divided into themes:

Contested Visions
Tenochtitlan and Cuzco Pre-Columbian Antecedents
Ancient Styles in the New Era
Conquest and New World Orders
The Devotional Landscape and the Indian as Good Christian
Indian Festivals and Sacred Rituals
Memory, Genealogy, and Land