This is one of the many faces you’ll encounter when you come see Faith and Fortune: Art Across the Global Spanish Empire. The artist of this work moved to Puebla as a young man to train at the academy of fine arts, and he remained in the city for the rest of his successful career as a painter of scenes of daily life. The title of this work suggests that the young man comes from the Afro-Mexican community that had long thrived on Mexico’s gulf coast. Slavery had been fully abolished in Mexico just a few years earlier, in 1837, so it is possible the young man was born to enslaved parents. The exhibition provides an opportunity to study critically the mechanics of colonization by examining the visual culture of the Spanish Empire. Come see it before October 10. • José Agustín Arrieta. El Costeño / The Young Man from the Coast, after 1843. Oil on canvas, Unframed 89 x 71 cm. On loan from the Hispanic Society of America, New York, NY Museum Department Purchase, 2013.