Isa Cruz

Until December, visitors can explore the Bowdoin College Museum of Art’s (BCMA) newest exhibition: “Visions Unsettled: Stages of the Self in the Hispanic World, from the Spanish Empire to the Global Present.”

The show was curated by Visiting Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx Studies Yoel Castillo Botello and students of his spring 2025 course “Portraits of Exile: Identity and Performance in Spanish Culture.” The group worked with the BCMA staff to bring the idea to life.

The exhibition focuses on identity and performance in the Hispanic world, with works ranging from the 16th century to today. Castillo Botello noted the connection between his course and the curatorial vision.

“The course was a survey that explored the ways in which identity has been represented and staged throughout Iberian history in specific formats, like in theater, in art, in cinema, in different artistic representations and of mediums,” he said. “One of the things that we focused on was very specific groups of identities that have been used throughout history, constructing ideas of the nation in Spain and ideas of what a national identity might mean.… They tend to be identities that are always contested or in some sort of marginalized aspect of society.”

The show brings together a diverse group of works across an extensive time period. Visitors can ponder a wide variety of groupings framed by the tensions inherent to identity and Spanish history.

“The exhibit[ion] focuses on visions of the self that can be unsettling, right? And they can be unsettling from different angles.… They can be unsettling from the perspective of the intentions of the artist, and they can also be unsettling from the perspective … of the spectator, right, like really trying to make sense of art that, in some ways, is reflecting constructions of identity by society, by the artist, by many different things,” Castillo Botello said.

Castillo Botello highlighted how working in the museum brought out new perspectives in his students.

“It’s a magical experience, [it] is one of those experiences where you can see how minds just spark.… You can see how immediately you know a lot of the concepts, things, characters and ideas that we explore in the classroom come to life just by looking at art,” he said. “That also happens whenever [we take] the classroom experience to the world. For me…, it’s a beautiful way of thinking about teaching, learning and pedagogy.”

Of the many works on show, a pairing of portraits stood out to both Castillo Botello and Melisa Vaca ’28, one of the students involved.

The two works of the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia of Spain, both produced in the early to mid-16th century, are incredibly different.

“One Infanta looks a bit older, a lot more modest….. It may have actually been produced before [the other], where youthful looks and standards of beauty are going to be more important. But, in both cases, these are representations of the royal line of royalty…. [We look at] how art and the gaze can be deceiving,” he said.

Vaca emphasized how visitors can trace continuity and change of womanhood that comes through in the exhibition’s works.

“They can really get a sense of the change that women have gone through and how they were perceived throughout the different time periods,” Vaca said.

BCMA Curator Casey Braun played a key supportive role as Botello and the class worked on the exhibition. She helped guide the group through stages of the curation process.

Braun shared her enthusiasm for the student’s work.

“I think it’s really incredible on a personal level to be able to work with the same group of students over the course of the semester on a project where I can really see the evolution of their skills, of their knowledge,” she said. “From an institutional level, it’s really important that faculty and students view the museum as a resource for them for their own creative work, for their own scholarship, and so I hope that by the sustained engagement over the course of the semester, that students start to feel like just more at home in the museum.”

Vaca shared her appreciation for the BCMA staff and the overall experience.

It was a really great opportunity [to get a new perspective],” she said.