About the Collection

The majority of the Museum’s collection of works of arts created during Spain’s colonization of the Americas came from Dr. Robert M. Lamborn, a metallurgist and engineer who amassed one of the first sizable collections of Mexican viceregal art in the United States.

Born in 1835, he acquired his collection during 1881-1883 while working to develop the territory from El Paso to Mexico City for a railroad. Lamborn published the first book in English on the subject of Mexican colonial painting in 1891, before dying suddenly in 1895. His belief in the importance and quality of Mexican colonial painting has continued to inspire the Philadelphia Museum of Art, as seen in the special exhibition Tesoros/Treasures/Tesouros: The Arts in Latin America, 1492–1820.