A Room of Her Own: The Estrado and the Hispanic World

A Room of Her Own explores the rich history of the estrado—a woman’s private drawing room found in early modern Spain and the Spanish Americas—and illuminates the estrado’s long-overlooked role in female agency, social practices, and intercultural exchange. The exhibition features decorative objects, paintings, textiles, rare books, and engravings from the Hispanic Society’s unrivaled collection, with many works on view for the first time.

The exhibition traces the evolution of the sala de estrado from Islamic al-Andalus to the Americas, where it flourished until the collapse of the Spanish Empire. Described in the Diccionario de Autoridades (Madrid, 1732) as the “set of furniture used to cover and decorate the place or room where the ladies sit to receive visitors,” the estrado was a room or designated area where women engaged in elaborate social practices and displayed their collections of valuable objects from the Americas, Asia, and Europe.