The Sense of Beauty: Six Centuries of Painting from Museo de Arte de Ponce November 5, 2026–March 14, 2027

The Sense of Beauty, a traveling exhibition organized by the Museo de Arte de Ponce, highlights the most representative areas of the Museum’s collection featuring sixty paintings by European, Puerto Rican, and American artists. Founded in 1959 by Luis A. Ferré, the Museo de Arte de Ponce is located on the southern coast of Puerto Rico and is a cultural landmark of the Caribbean.

The exhibition brings magnificent works of art from the 1500s to today to the mainland United States, many for the first time. While the Museum’s iconic 1965 Edward Durell Stone building undergoes repairs following the 2020 earthquakes, its most treasured works are on the move, sharing Puerto Rico’s rich artistic heritage with new audiences.

Presented in five thematic sections, highlights include religious subjects by El Greco and Peter Paul Rubens; portraits by Francisco de Goya and Élisabeth Louise Vigée LeBrun; and landscapes by Claude Lorrain and Frederic Church. Paintings by renowned Puerto Rican artists from the 1700s to today include historic masterworks by José Campeche and Francisco Oller y Cestero, as well as modern and contemporary paintings by Myrna Báez, Rafael Ferrer, and Waldemar Morales Lugo that reflect evolving visions of beauty across time and place. Also on view will be signature Victorian paintings, including the iconic Flaming June by Frederic Leighton.

The exhibition is curated by Iraida Rodríguez-Negrón and is accompanied by a fully illustrated, bilingual catalogue, available in the Museum Shop.

In conjunction with The Sense of Beauty, The Wadsworth presents ¡Batey Boricua! Creamos Nuestro Espacio | We Create Our Space—a companion exhibition highlighting contemporary Puerto Rican artists in Connecticut.