The Crocker Art Museum is proud to present The Sense of Beauty: Six Centuries of Painting from Museo de Arte de Ponce, an extraordinary exhibition showcasing 60 masterworks from the renowned collection of Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico. Spanning six centuries—from the 16th to the 21st—this remarkable exhibition includes iconic paintings never before seen in the United States, all accompanied by bilingual English-Spanish descriptions.  

Among the highlights is the iconic Flaming June (1895) by Frederic, Lord Leighton (1830–1896), a jewel of the Ponce’s internationally renowned Pre-Raphaelite collection. The exhibition also features outstanding works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais. 

 “Ponce's collection of Old Masters and Pre-Raphaelite art is exceptional. Seventeen years ago, I had the privilege of taking these treasures to major European institutions like the Prado, Tate Britain, and the Belvedere. More recently, Flaming June has been seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Frick Collection, where it drew critical acclaim and tens of thousands of visitors. I’m thrilled to now bring this iconic painting to the Crocker, so that audiences in Sacramento, the Bay Area, and across the West Coast can experience it firsthand,” notes Agustín Arteaga, the Crocker’s new Mort and Marcy Friedman Director & CEO. 

In addition to Flaming June, visitors will encounter a rich tapestry of European and American art including:  

• Portraits by Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, John Singer Sargent, and Élisabeth-Louise Vigée Le Brun 

• Landscapes by Frederic Edwin Church, Claude Lorrain, and Gustave Courbet 

• Historical and mythical scenes by Jean-Léon Gérôme and Angelica Kauffman 

• Religious paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder, El Greco, Peter Paul Rubens, and Anthony van Dyck 

• Genre scenes by William-Adolphe Bouguereau and James Tissot  

Interwoven throughout the exhibition are key contemporary works by Puerto Rican artists from the 18th century to today, presented in thematic dialogue with the historical paintings. 

The Sense of Beauty will be installed in the Crocker’s historic Victorian gallery building, which has not hosted a traveling exhibition in more than 20 years. Built in 1872 and part of the original Crocker family estate, the building's elegant architecture creates a compelling backdrop for the exhibition. While some of the Museum’s European paintings will be temporarily deinstalled to make way for the show, others will remain on view, creating a rich visual conversation between the Crocker’s holdings and the visiting works from Ponce. 

“This exhibition offers an extraordinary opportunity to engage our community with artworks that are both visually stunning and deeply meaningful,” says Sarah Farkas, the in-house curator of the exhibition. “Many of the paintings on view dialogue with our own collection, enriching and expanding how we understand these periods and styles.” 

Museo de Arte de Ponce’s signature 1965 building by Edward Durell Stone has been undergoing structural repairs since a series of earthquakes in 2020. During this time, the museum has shared its treasures with audiences around the world through traveling exhibitions like The Sense of Beauty. As part of this partnership, the Crocker will lend one of its own masterpieces to Ponce once the museum reopens.  The Sense of Beauty was conceived and curated by Iraida Rodríguez-Negrón, curator at Museo de Arte de Ponce. This exhibition has been organized by Museo de Arte de Ponce in collaboration with the Crocker Art Museum. The project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. 

A fully illustrated, bilingual scholarly catalogue accompanies the exhibition. Edited by Rodríguez-Negrón, the catalogue includes an essay chronicling the history of Ponce’s collection and detailed entries on each of the featured paintings, authored by leading scholars from Puerto Rico and the United States. 

The Sense of Beauty will be on view at the Crocker concurrently with Making Moves: A Collection of Feminisms (November 2, 2025 – May 3, 2026) and Rebels with La Causa: Royal Chicano Air Force Art and Activism, 1970–1990 (February 22 – June 28, 2026).