Jesús Escobar, new Center for Spain in America Fellow at the Clark Art Institute
Jesús Escobar is professor of art history at Northwestern University in Chicago. His research explores architecture and urbanism of the early modern Spanish Empire from the vantages of politics, space, and cross-cultural exchange. He is the author of The Plaza Mayor and the Shaping of Baroque Madrid (Cambridge University Press, 2004; Spanish-language edition, Editorial Nerea, 2007) and Habsburg Madrid: Architecture and the Spanish Monarchy (Penn State University Press, 2022), both winners of the Eleanor Tufts Award. Escobar is also editor of the scholarly book series, Buildings, Landscapes, and Societies.
At the Clark, he will work on an article considering the transatlantic itineraries of two accomplished Dominican priests—Antonio de Monroy, a native of Mexico, and Juan Meléndez, a native of Peru—and their individual experiences with architecture in Mexico, Peru, Spain, and Italy. The research is related to a book project with the working title, “Americans Abroad in the Seventeenth Century: People, Buildings, and the Space of Empire.” Focusing on American-born protagonists and using a transatlantic framework, the project deliberately challenges traditional narratives about the transmission of architectural knowledge as a story that begins in Europe and travels west across the Atlantic Ocean.
