630. Introduction: Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter

NARRATOR: Welcome to the Audio Guide for the exhibition Juan de Pareja, Afro-Hispanic Painter. Imagine the year 1926. Arturo Alfonso Schomburg, a Black Puerto Rican historian and collector, embarks on a deeply personal journey to Spain. His mission was to research and explore centuries of Black life in Europe, including that of the painter Juan de Pareja. A notable artist in his own right, Pareja was an enslaved studio assistant to famed Spanish painter Diego Velázquez. It's been a century since Schomburg’s travels and nearly 400 years after the life of Juan de Pareja, and we’re still asking questions. This Audio Guide explores not only elements of Pareja’s career, but also his unique legacy: how it fits into both a Western artistic canon and the African diaspora, whose cultural contributions and integral roles in European society are often overlooked or oversimplified. You’ll hear from scholars at the forefront of the ongoing research into the richness of Afro-Hispanic life in 17th-century Spain. Listen in as curators, historians, art historians, conservators, and archivists dispel old myths and shine light on this ever-evolving inquiry. As Schomburg wrote in a landmark essay “The Negro Digs up His Past”… “History must restore what slavery took away…” This Audio Guide is sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies. ###