The Art of the Americas collection includes pre-Columbian art produced by Native Americans prior to the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century. The pieces cover a time span of approximately 2,000 years, from 500 B.C. to 1500 A.D., and include the "Stela" of Central Mexico dated between 100 B.C. and 250 B.C. and the "Feline Head Fragment" from Peru dated between 500 B.C. and 300 B.C.
There are more than 1,900 works in the Spanish Colonial and folk art collections. These are works whose principal inspiration is European, and whose origin lies with Spanish and Portuguese colonies in the New World. The museum also has one of the region's foremost collection of oil-on-tin retablos and about 100 Mexican provincial paintings. While these date from the post-colonial period, they owe their inspiration to Spanish Colonial art. These are very close to the works of Jose Estrada and Hermenegildo Bustos, the two most famous Mexican provincial portrait painters of the 19th Century.
