Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/496780
Yet, in the period after 1955, attention shifted away from Latin America and subsequently many of its architectural triumphs have been ignored. Now, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of MoMA's first Latin America architecture show, the museum is closely examining the period between 1955 and 1980—and the achievements therein that remain absent from the Modernist architectural canon. "I don't think the exhibition sets Latin America apart—I think it sets it within what is happening in architecture," says del Real. "We have to consider the importance within the history of modernism. It has to be part of this grand narrative." While the show looks at many countries together—Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico—del Real emphasizes that it is not meant to frame Latin America as an undifferentiated mass. The curators were fighting against "this idea that Latin America is this homogenous totality—'there's a little Barragán here, a little Lina here, a little Niemeyer here,'" says de Real. "We are trying to break these myths. You can not reduce the region to these three great figures." One of the lesser-known figures del Real pointed to is Venezuelan architect Tomas Jose Sanabria, who designed the Hotel Humboldt in Caracas. Built in 1956 in the Avila mountain range, more than 6,500 feet above sea level, the hotel could only be reached by cable car. Although it was a huge hit at the time of its debut, the hotel-in-the-clouds was closed in the 1960s (in the past few years the Venezuelan government has announced plans to resuscitate the building, with a rumored opening sometime this year). Alongside images of the hotel is a selection of postcard-sized sketches and watercolors depicting the daily weather conditions in Caracas that Sanabria, who is also a pilot, made every day during his morning flight. The beautiful sketches of the Venezuelan coast are one of several fanciful moments that punctuate the show and give insight into the particular (and peculiar) processes that informed the creations of Latin America's landmarks. By giving this show prime real estate on the sixth floor (in the large space formerly occupied by the Matisse show), MoMA seems to be showing a genuine commitment to not just righting its own history of exclusionism but also reshaping architectural history altogether. "The ultimate goal would be to rewrite the history of modernism and to rewrite the history of architecture," says del Real. "Especially nowadays within the global world we can make quite public that this architecture and this period was part of a global conversation. We have to write a global history of architecture." 166 CULTURED Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer's Plaza of the Three Powers, Brasília, 1958-1960