The Sense of Beauty

In commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the museum’s founding in 1959 and the 60th anniversary of the opening of the building that houses our main galleries, we are pleased to present 𝐸𝑙 𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑑𝑜 𝑑𝑒 𝑙𝑜 𝑏𝑒𝑙𝑙𝑜: 𝑆𝑒𝑖𝑠 𝑠𝑖𝑔𝑙𝑜𝑠 𝑑𝑒 𝑝𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑎 𝑑𝑒𝑙 𝑀𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑜 𝑑𝑒 𝐴𝑟𝑡𝑒 𝑑𝑒 𝑃𝑜𝑛𝑐𝑒, a traveling exhibition that seeks to highlight the three most representative areas of the Museum’s collection with a selection of sixty paintings by European, Puerto Rican, and American artists.

Former governor of Puerto Rico Luis A. Ferré (1904–2003) was an industrialist, an engineer, a musician, and an ardent aficionado of art. Ferré was inspired to collect art during a transformative trip to Spain in the 1950s, where he began purchasing contemporary copies of paintings by Spanish old masters like Murillo and El Greco. However, Ferré soon longed for the “spark of life” of original works of art, and so he embarked on a lifelong mission to amass a collection of genuine masterpieces.

Over the next decade Ferré acquired about two hundred works, focusing on seventeenth- and nineteenth-century painting in particular. To house his collection, he founded the Museo de Arte de Ponce (MAP) in 1959, now one of the Caribbean’s leading cultural institutions. Ferré’s eclectic taste is evident in Museo de Arte de Ponce’s collection, which spans from the Italian Renaissance to contemporary Puerto Rican artists.

In the aftermath of the devastating earthquakes that rocked the island in January 2020 and forced the museum’s closure of its signature 1965 building by Edward Durell Stone for repairs, Museo de Arte de Ponce has seized the opportunity to allow selected works from its collection to travel the globe and bring it wider exposure. The largest of these exhibitions, The Sense of Beauty: Six Centuries of Painting from Museo de Arte de Ponce, is on a multicity tour across the United States. More than sixty works dating from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first will be on view, reflecting the extraordinary scope and diversity of Museo de Arte de Ponce’s collection.

The Sense of Beauty will feature masterworks by the leading lights of European and American painting. The exhibition gathers religious and historical pictures by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, and Angelica Kauffmann; portraits by Joshua Reynolds and Elisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun; landscapes by Claude Lorrain and Gustave Courbet; and genre scenes by Jean-Léon Gérôme and William-Adolphe Bouguereau. 

Museo de Arte de Ponce is especially known for having the largest collection of Pre-Raphaelite art outside of the UK. The iconic painting Flaming June by Frederic Leighton will be a major highlight, joining works by two other members of the brotherhood, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais. Dazzling landscapes by George Inness, Frederic Edwin Church, and William Merritt Chase will demonstrate the sublime power of nineteenth-century American painting. The exhibition will also emphasize the legacy of Puerto Rican art, from José Campeche’s devotional images of the late eighteenth century to the work of contemporary artists such as Myrna Báez, Francisco Rodón, and María de Mater O’Neill.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

Image credit:  Frederic, Lord Leighton (British, 1830-1896), “Flaming June,” 1895. Oil on canvas, 46 7/8 × 46 7/8 in. (119.1 × 119.1 cm), Museo de Arte de Ponce. The Luis A. Ferré Foundation, Inc. 63.0406. Image courtesy of Museo de Arte de Ponce.