The Hispanic Society of America is a museum of Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin American art and artifacts, as well as a rare books and manuscripts research library. Founded in 1904 by Archer M. Huntington, the institution is free and open to the public at its original location in a Beaux Arts building on Audubon Terrace (at 155th Street and Broadway) in the lower Washington Heights area of New York City in the United States.
Exterior sculpture at the Society includes work by Anna Hyatt Huntington and nine major reliefs by the Swiss-American sculptor Berthold Nebel, a commission that took ten years to complete.
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The museum contains works by Diego Velázquez, Francisco de Goya, El Greco, and Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, among others.
A major component of this museum is the Sorolla Room which was reinstalled in 2010. It displays a massive series of Sorolla paintings created from 1911 to 1919 (commissioned by Archer Huntington). The paintings ring the large room (estimate: 50 ft square) and depict scenes from each of the provinces of Spain.
The rare books library maintains 15,000 books printed before 1700, including a first edition of Don Quijote.