The Hispanic Society of America, now renamed the Hispanic Society Museum and Library (HSM&L), operates a museum and reference library for the study of the arts and cultures of Spain and Portugal and their former colonies in Latin America, the Spanish East Indies, and Portuguese India. Despite the name, it has never functioned as a learned society.
Founded in 1904 by philanthropist Archer M. Huntington, the institution continues to operate at its original location in a 1908 Beaux Arts building on Audubon Terrace in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. A second building, on the north side of the terrace, was added in 1930. Exterior sculpture in front of that building includes work by Anna Hyatt Huntington and nine major reliefs by the Swiss-American sculptor Berthold Nebel, a commission that took ten years to complete. The Hispanic Society complex was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 2012. In 1997, the museum expanded into the former home of the Museum of the American Indian (MAI), adjacent to the museum's original building.
Collections
The museum contains more than 18,000 works in every medium, ranging from prehistoric times to the 20th century. The collection includes over 900 paintings, featuring important examples by leading Spanish masters, including three paintings by Diego Velázquez, five by Francisco de Goya, and seven by El Greco. Modern works include a large suite by Joaquín Sorolla, a group by Ignacio Zuloaga, and 34 works by the Spanish symbolist Viladrich Vilá, which were all bought by Huntington. It also includes sculpture and architectural elements, furniture and metalwork, ceramics and textiles.
The Sorolla Room, which was reinstalled in 2010, displays Vision of Spain, 14 massive paintings commissioned by Archer Huntington in 1911. Sorolla completed these works from 1913 to 1919. These paintings total more than 200 linear feet (61 m); they ring the large room and depict scenes from the regions of Spain.
The library contains more than 250,000 books; 200,000 documents; 175,000 photographs; and 15,000 prints. The rare books library maintains 15,000 books printed before 1700, including a first edition of Don Quijote. It also holds the manuscript Black Book of Hours, Horae Beatae Virginis Mariae ad usum Romanum (circa 1458), one of only a handful of such works, and the enormous Map of the World (1526) by Juan Vespucio.
The society has been described as "perhaps New York's most misunderstood institution", because it was established to concentrate on Old Spain and its culture in its colonies, as opposed to Hispanic American culture, despite its location in what has over time become a predominantly Hispanic (chiefly Dominican) neighborhood. In 2012 it was suggested that the museum (although not the society) be renamed the "Archer M. Huntington Museum of Art" to clarify this distinction, but the name change was never pursued.
It has been described as an "initially vibrant" institution that "became somber and insular... like some imperious hidalgo citadel cast adrift in time and space." It was also characterized as hostile to Latinx visitors and to the Dominican community. In 1989, the institution's director Theodore S. Beardsley Jr., characterized the local community as possessing a “low level of culture,” and its president George S. Moore described it as “non-taxpaying slums.”
Under director Mitchell A. Codding (1995-2020) the museum, it has been written, "worked hard to transform this image," including an acquisition program that included "savvy purchases of works from Latin America that have broadened the scope of the collection." Codding's purchases were made possible by the sale in 2012-13 of 38,000 Iberian and Spanish colonial coins that Huntington had collected, which were estimated at $25-35 million. In 2025, the museum deaccessioned 45 Old Master paintings, mostly copies and workshop paintings, to benefit collection acquisition and collection care.
Codding supported the exclusion of contemporary art. Senior Curator Marcus Burke spoke positively about the local community, and saw the present-day U.S. Southwest as a proper focus of collecting activities, since it was once part of the Spanish empire.
On the basis of his comments, it was anticipated that the appointment of Guillaume Kientz, Codding's successor, would "accelerate its efforts to become a more community-, Latin American-, and Latinx-friendly institution."
The 2026 exhibition "Sandy Rodriguez: Tierra Insurgente" placed the L.A.based Chicana artist's work "in dialogue with colonial-era cartography, allegories of the Americas, botanical books, and Indigenous manuscripts," in the context of "a history of conquest and resistance." Rodriguez, who uses traditional indigenous materials, makes her own paints, and her hand-crafted objects, which carried anti-colonial messages, were displayed side-by-side with the museum's historical books, maps, globes, and other objects.
Creation of a historic museum
During the late 19th century in the United States, when Manifest Destiny conjoined the Black Legend, attitudes towards Spain were extremely negative, as the U.S, sought to replace Spain as the dominant regional colonial power.
This is mainly due to the fact that during the 16th to 17th centuries, Spain had set its sights on dominating most of North and South America. Therefore, by the 18th century, the United States viewed Spain as an enemy that must be dealt with in order to move forward with American success in North America. During the 19th century, many areas once under Spanish control in North America were added to the territories of the United States. By the turn of the 19th century into the 20th century, Hispanic and Latin American studies became more pronounced in the scholarly world in the United States. Huntington's Hispanic Society of America was one of the leaders in the movement to bring Hispanic art to the attention of scholars in order to introduce the concept that Hispanic art was worthy of study. People started to realize that learning about Hispanic culture was important because it was such a large part of American history. Huntington had the foresight to see how important this kind of museum would be and established the museum in 1904.
Huntington worked diligently in collecting a vast amount of Hispanic books, documents, artifacts, and art. He was not primarily an art collector: he distrusted art dealers and did not want to spend lavishly on art (his mother Arabella Huntington, who was one of the Gilded Age's biggest spenders, bought the two most expensive paintings). He had only 23 paintings (most of them insignificant) when the society was founded. Artist-advisors helped him select Old Master paintings, and today the Spanish Golden Age paintings are regarded as one of the better collections of this material in the U.S.
Huntington collected Hispanic heritage objects, manuscripts, and around 40,000 rare books. The library's foundation was made in 1902, when he bought the best private library in Spain, which belonged to the Marquis of Jerez de los Caballeros in Seville. Huntington then engaged the Leipzig-based book dealer Karl W. Hiersemann to assemble library materials for him to purchase. Today the library has 300,000 books and periodicals and 220,000 manuscripts and documents.
The library is a resource for scholars who study Hispanic history, literature, art, and culture to this day. Hence, his idea for the institution was not narrowly for showing paintings, sculptures, and historical artifacts, but more widely for it to be used as a center for research and scholarly study.
As for the design of the building, Huntington had a large role in the design and creation of the institution itself. The main building was based on the designs of Huntington's cousin, Charles P. Huntington. The chosen neoclassical design of the complex was designed to become the reputable institution that the Hispanic Society of America is today.U.S. Department of the Interior. (n.d.). The Hispanic Society of America---american latino heritage: A discover our shared heritage travel itinerary. National Park Service. Retrieved October 17, 2022, from Huntington conceived of Audubon Terrace as a substantial complex of cultural institutions, which was partially realized. He had a direct role in founding 14 cultural institutions, and he provided funding for a number of them to be housed at Audubon Terrace.
Dia at the Hispanic Society of America Between 2007 and 2011, the Dia Art Foundation commissioned several projects at the Hispanic Society's Building on West 155th Street. These commissions were by Francis Alÿs, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, and Koo Jeong A. A weekly event called "Tuesdays on the Terrace" was also organized by Dia over these years presenting public outdoor programing of dance, music, and poetry.An Introduction to Dia's Locations and Sites. Dia Art Foundation. p. 104.
Expansion and renovations In April 2015 the society announced the appointment of Philippe de Montebello to chair the society's Board of Overseers and spearhead a major effort to roughly double the museum's size by renovating the vacant Beaux Arts building adjacent to the society's original museum building. It was formerly the home of the Museum of the American Indian (MAI), which Huntington had brought to Audubon Terrace. The museum was absorbed by the Smithsonian Institution in 1990, and its main facility built on the mall in Washington D.C. It also operates an outpost in the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in lower Manhattan (a condition mandated by New York as a condition of permitting the merger and move to D.C), and a storage facility in Maryland. The Hispanic Society bought the MAI building in 1996 for $2.1 million.
Beginning January 1, 2017, the museum was closed for extensive renovations, although the library was open on a limited basis by appointment only. The $15 million project replaced the building's roof and lighting. Originally scheduled to reopen in the fall of 2019, progress was delayed, with the new East Building Gallery, formerly the Museum of the American Indian, opening in 2021 for rotating exhibitions, followed by a general reopening in June 2023.
While the museum was closed, many of its works were lent to other institutions. About 200 of the society's most important works were displayed from April through September 2017 at the Museo del Prado in Madrid. The exhibit traveled to the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City from June through September 2018; the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, November 2018 through March 2019; the Cincinnati Art Museum, October 2019 through January 2020; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston from March to May 2020.Newsletter of the Hispanic Society, February 2020 There was also a major exhibition in London in 2023.
Admission to the museum has always been free, in accordance with Archer Huntington's trust. Due to financial difficulties, the society went to court in 2016 in order to be allowed to charge an admission fee to temporary exhibitions to be held in the museum's new facility, while keeping the main hall free. As of 2022, admission to the new galleries is free.
In 2020 the museum appointed Guillaume Kientz, former curator at the Louvre and the Kimbell Art Museum, as its new director.
Unionization and strike