For New Yorkers looking for a dose of escape, a trip to the Hispanic Community Museum and Library in Washington Heights “A Room of One’s Own: Estrado and the Spanish World” It could just be one thing. The subject of this fascinating exhibition is the estrado, a private drawing room for women once found in the homes of the elite in Spain and Spanish America. The estrado, a site of both wealth and confinement, is today intertwined with complex concepts such as gender, cultural exchange, colonialism, and power.

An important part of domestic life for hundreds of years until the 19th century, the estrado was often a place where the family’s most valuable belongings were displayed, where women could socialize, educate their children, and engage in hobbies such as lace and needlework. Yet it remains an overlooked and under-researched topic.

Objects such as an ivory-inlaid chest (back), a cobalt chalice (left), a bobbin lace-trimmed tray (right), and a glass bottle (foreground) filled an estrado.

Alfonso Lozano. Courtesy of the New York Hispanic Community Museum and Library.

“This is the first exhibition of its kind on this subject, and it was very shocking to me,” says the exhibition’s curator, Alexandra Frantischek Rodriguez-Jack. He spent years looking through period documents, including dowries, letters, postmortem inventories, travel documents and literature, to find mentions of Estrado and his accoutrements.

With these historical references in mind, Rodriguez-Jack selected more than 60 outstanding pieces from the Hispanic Society’s extensive permanent collection, many of them on display for the first time. The show is located in the fascinating area of ​​the museum terracotta bazaarThe objects on display – such as red velvet cushions, walnut chests inlaid with ivory, silver maté cups and crosses dripping with precious stones – give a hint of the grandeur an estrado could possess. (Founded in 1904 by art collector and railroad preacher Archer Milton Huntington, the museum reopened last year after 1904. six-year, $20 million renovation.) “There’s a reason why everything is here, and that’s because the description is very similar to something that might be in the estrado based on these inventories,” says Rodriguez-Jack.