There is a common misconception that Foucauldian critique is a reductive reading of a work of art to show how it is merely a product of its time. It’s just the opposite: the idea is to show how time itself, historical epochs, or epistemes, are produced and organized by (and through) the language of art, science, and culture. Las Meninas is not simply a representation of sovereignty—it is a moment in the construction of the sovereign, of the entire Spanish empire. Consider this: a billionaire stamping his name on the outside wall of a museum doesn’t merely represent a philanthropic donation but expresses and justifies (one might even say launders) the sovereignty of the unregulated accumulation of private wealth. The contemporary art museum, with its wings and rotundas named for robber barons, is itself a keystone in our own aesthetic regime, one that mandates, reproduces, and further consolidates the nature of sovereignty, the order of things in our society.