Austin has a quiet, fascinating new reason to visit the Blanton Museum of Art. Shadows on Stone: Portraits of Colonial Mexican Architecture, the museum’s new Paper Vault exhibition, is on view from October 10, 2026, through January 31, 2027, on the second floor of the Michener Building.
The exhibition showcases the monasteries built in central Mexico at the end of the 16th century — extraordinary buildings that blend Gothic rib vaults, classical Renaissance facades, Moorish ornamentation and Indigenous stone masonry techniques. Architectural historian John McAndrew called them “the most dramatic American architectural innovation before the skyscraper,” and his photographs make that bold claim easy to understand.
Visitors explore those churches through McAndrew’s photographic archive, part of the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection at The University of Texas at Austin. An innovative display helps visitors feel the churches’ dimensions and their connection to the surrounding landscape, while also asking a lovely question: when is a photograph a document, and when is it a work of art? The show is curated by Rosario I. Granados, Marilynn Thoma Curator, Art of the Spanish Americas.
Want a guided start? A public, teacher-led tour of the exhibition takes place on Tuesday, October 27, from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m., included with admission. It is a perfect, unhurried art break in the heart of the UT Austin campus.
Photo: Blanton Museum of Art
