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Curating Architecture Across the Americas

Since the late 19th and early 20th Century, architecture exhibitions have helped imagine, construct, and order the built environment. Architecture exhibitions, however, remain understudied and challenging to produce, particularly in Latin America. CAAA seeks to promote research and establish this nascent field by focusing on themes, support research, and promote projects that dovetail and intersect architecture in the Americas.

This program is organized in collaboration with the Department of History of Art and Architecture and curated by professor Patricio del Real; Carolina Sepúlveda (MDes'20), Professor of Architecture, MARQ, Universidad Católica de Chile; Cristina López Uribe, Professor of Architecture, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; and Marcela V. Ramos, Program Manager for Art, Film, and Culture at DRCLAS.

Current Work

A conversation series will be held during Spring 2022

A fourth iteration of Curating Architecture Across the Americas: Historias Ausentes / Missing Histories will take place in 2023 to foment historical research on pre-1990 architecture exhibitions and expositions by establishing collaborations between scholars, archives, and museums, and alternative exhibition spaces. The aim of Historias Ausentes / Missing Histories will be to survey the state of the field with an open call for papers and will seek to establish meaningful and lasting collaborations with scholars, curators and institutions to become manifest and active presence in the region.

 

 

Why Architecture Belongs in the Museum | Second Iteration

 

Architecture as a cultural object in display was the subject of the Spring 2021 course: Architecture in the “museum.” This course explored the historical conditions that normalized the presentation of architecture in cultural spaces and run as parallel seminars held at the Department of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University; the Magíster en Arquitectura (MARQ), Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Estudios Urbanos, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile; and the Laboratorio Editorial de Arquitectura, Facultad de Arquitectura, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and was led by local faculty members. Each seminar focused on their national architectural contexts and worked together to survey and construct an Americanist geography of curatorial practices in architecture during the 20th century. 

Working sessions with collections specialists and curators were offered to students registered in the course Architecture in the "museum" | March 24: Paul Galloway, Collection Specialist, Architecture & Design, The Museum of Modern Art

The Conversation Series Why Architecture Belongs in the Museum was held between March and May 2021 as part of this course. Guest speakers included: Giovanna Borasi, Director, Canadian Center for Architecture | Ricardo Daza,  Director, Leopoldo Rother Architecture Museum , Universidad Nacional de Colombia | Barry Bergdoll, Professor of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University | Valentina Moimas, Curator, Architectural Collections, Centre Pompidou | Patricio del Real, Assistant Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University

 

 

Contact Spaces MX-US | First Iteration

The first iteration of CAAA gathered architecture curators, historians, and architects, working in art museums and architecture galleries from Mexico and the United States in the symposium titled Curating Architecture Across the Americas: Espacios de Contacto MX-US /Contact Spaces MX-US. With presentations focused on past and ongoing experiences and projects, the symposium discussed the role of architecture exhibitions in the expanding world of curatorial exhibition practices and cultural debates of the 21st Century. This program sprung from the seminar-workshop: Displaying Latin America, given in the Spring of 2019 at Harvard University’s Department of History of Art and Architecture and successfully inaugurated future endeavors.