Affiliated Scholars Program

The Custard Institute is pleased to announce the Affiliated Scholars program, which connects the institute to eminent researchers and scholars of Spanish art and culture. Blanca Pons-Sorolla, an independent researcher and leading expert on the work of Joaquín Sorolla, her great-grandfather, has been named the inaugural Affiliated Scholar. She is known for having curated Sorolla and America (2013–14), an exhibition that traveled from the Meadows Museum to the San Diego Museum of Art and the Fundación MAPFRE in Madrid. She also co-curated the exhibition Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923) at the Prado in 2009. Her books include Joaquín Sorolla: Vida y obra (2001), Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923) (2009), and Sorolla: The Masterworks (2012). She is a trustee of the Fundación Museo Sorolla in Madrid and chairs its standing committee. In 2009 she received the Sorolla Medal from the Hispanic Society of America in New York for her contribution to Hispanic arts and culture. She is currently working on a multivolume catalogue raisonné of the artist, and, most recently, was the co-curator of the exhibit Sorolla a través de la luz at the Palacio Real in Madrid. Currently, Pons-Sorolla is collaborating with the Meadows Museum once again on the fall exhibition, Spanish Light: Sorolla in American Collections.