From the outset of the Second World War, to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) played a role in promoting developments in modern architecture in Latin America that was, inevitably, politically inflected.
Such influential shows as Brazil Builds of 1942 also had a huge impact on the writing of the history of modern architecture on both sides of the Atlantic.
Recently, the Museum returned to the region after a hiatus of sixty years. This lecture will offer an interpretation of MoMA’s important mid-century engagement with then contemporary architecture in Latin America as a prelude to discussing the recent major exhibition Latin America in Construction, Architecture 1955–1980,of which Professor Bergdoll was one of the curators.
This exhibition proposed not only to recalibrate our understanding of architectural developments in the post-World War II era, but also to look at contemporary resonances of a rich body of work too little known outside Latin America.
More information on this event is available from the Edinburgh College of Art website: