Patricio del Real presents his book, Constructing Latin America. Architecture, Politics, and Race at the Museum of Modern Art (Yale University Press, 2022)—a nuanced look at how, through architecture exhibitions, this New York institution became a key agent in cultural politics in the United States and in the consolidation of “Latin American architecture” as a modernist category. Del Real demonstrates how The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)’s curatorial activities generated and naturalized “Latin America” not only as a stylistic and cultural variant of international modernism but also as a racializing concept at a critical global conjuncture. The idea of “Latin American architecture” was seminal for the interpretation of modern architecture in the twentieth century and, moreover, for MoMA’s international projection as cultural arbiter in the Cold War period. It remains an active category that underpins studies on architectural modernism as a global phenomenon. Constructing Latin America was supported by a grant from the Graham Foundation in 2021. This talk is presented in conjunction with Latinitudes: A Collection of Latin American Modern Architecture by Leonardo Finotti, on view at the Graham Foundation through July 18, 2026.

Patricio del Real is known for his expertise in the field of architecture and architecture history, with a focus in the Americas. His work examines the intersections of buildings, politics and cultural identity. As an architectural historian, he contributes to a deeper understanding of the global dimensions of modernism, shedding light on its unique transformations and adaptations. One of his notable contributions is his focus on institutions and the transnational flows of ideas and practices and how these migrations have impacted both the development of architectural forms and the practices of architects in the second postwar period. Del Real is associate professor in the department of the history of art and architecture at Harvard University. Before his appointment at Harvard, he worked at The Museum of Modern Art’s architecture and design department on several temporary and collection exhibitions, and cocurated Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955-1980.

Image: Louise Dahl-Wolfe, Fashion shoot in front of the Ministério da Educação e Saúde (MES), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as published in, “Urban Cotton: For Being at Ease,” Harper’s Bazaar, May 1946

For more information on the exhibition, Latinitudes
A Collection of Latin American Modern Architecture, click here.

PAST EVENTS

In Terra Infecta, Andrea Bagnato traces a political ecology of the Italian landscape. The book, recently published by MACK, uses the lens of health and illness to explore how the modern quest for sanitation shaped Italy's urban and rural landscapes through architecture, demolition, and displacement. The result of a decade of research and fieldwork supported in part by a grant from the Graham Foundation, Terra Infecta recounts histories of dispossession and resistance in Naples, Venice, Milan, and Matera.

Andrea Bagnato is joined by Jennifer Scappettone for a reading and conversation. Drawing from their respective research and writing, Bagnato and Scappettone discuss the long-term markings that fascism, internal colonialism, and modernization have left on the physical environment, and how different narrative forms can help us make sense of ecological change.

Andrea Bagnato is an architect and writer based in Genoa, Italy. He has taught at Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam;  the Architectural Association School of Architecture (AA), London; and the Decolonizing Architecture program at the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm. Previous books include the collective volumes Rights of Future Generations (Hatje Cantz, 2022) and the Graham-funded A Moving Border: Alpine Cartographies of Climate Change (Columbia, 2019).

Jennifer Scappettone works at the confluence of the literary, visual, and scholarly arts, and is professor of literature and faculty affiliate of the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization at the University of Chicago, where she directs the Environmental Arts+Humanities Lab. She is the author of five full-length books of poetry, translations and prose, including most recently Poetry After Barbarism, The Republic of Exit 43, and Killing the Moonlight: Modernism in Venice.

Presented with support from the Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Chicago.

Image: Marjory Collins, Life in Matera before the evictions, 1950. Photograph. Courtesy Schlesinger Library, Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Cambridge, MA

CURRENT EXHIBITION
LATINITUDES 
A Collection of Modern Architecture
Photographs by Leonardo Finotti
Curated by Michelle Jean de Castro
April 2–July 18, 2026
Opening April 2, 6–8 p.m.; gallery hours resume April 3

GALLERY AND BOOKSHOP HOURS
Wednesday–Saturday, 12–5 p.m.
Free admission, no reservations required—ring the doorbell for entry.

EXPO Art Week
Art After Hours
Galleries and Bookshop open late
Friday, April 10, 12–8 p.m.



Image: Facultad de Ingeniería de Minas, Geología y Metalurgia (Faculty of Mining, Geology, and Metallurgical Engineering), Lima, Peru, designed by Walter Weberhofer, 1956–62. Photograph by Leonardo Finotti, 2016. © Leonardo Finotti

Brazilian photographer and visual artist Leonardo Finotti discusses Latinitudes and his long-term project documenting modern architecture across Latin America, including the development of the exhibition and its accompanying publication series with Lars Müller Publishers. The talk is followed by a reception to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.

Latinitudes, presented for the first time in the United States, is a photographic survey of modern architecture across twelve Latin American cities: Buenos Aires, Argentina; Bogotá, Colombia; Caracas, Venezuela; Guatemala City, Guatemala; Havana, Cuba; Lima, Peru; Mexico City, Mexico; Montevideo, Uruguay; Quito, Ecuador; San José, Costa Rica; Santiago, Chile; and São Paulo, Brazil. Featuring more than 100 photographs by Finotti and curated by Brazilian architect Michelle Jean de Castro, the exhibition presents modern architecture across Latin America from a new perspective. Combining the words "latitudes" and "Latin," the exhibition proposes a horizontal framework connecting cities across shared geographies and histories, presenting housing, civic, and cultural works by key figures of modernism—Luis Barragán, Lina Bo Bardi, Roberto Burle Marx, Félix Candela, Eladio Dieste, Emilio Duhart, Ricardo Legorreta, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Oscar Niemeyer, Juan O'Gorman, Mario Pani, Ricardo Porro, Rogelio Salmona, Clorindo Testa, and Carlos Raúl Villanueva, among others.

Leonardo Finotti is a visual artist based in São Paulo, Brazil, whose work centers on two complementary themes: modern architecture and anonymous or informal urban spaces. Trained as an architect, he holds a bachelor of arts in architecture from the Universidade Federal de Uberlândia; completed postgraduate studies at the Bauhaus Foundation in Dessau, Germany; and began his career in Portugal before returning to Brazil to embark on a long-term photographic project that revisits and reinterprets the legacy of modern architecture across Latin America and beyond. Alongside collaborations with international architects, institutions, and publications, Finotti has produced a number of independent projects through exhibitions and books, including Pelada (2014); Latinitudes (2015); Rio Enquadrado (2016); A Collection of Latin American Modern Architecture (Lars Müller, 2016); and Sacred Groves & Secret Parks (2019). His work has been widely exhibited and is held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur (Switzerland); Fundação EDP (Portugal); Architekturzentrum Wien (Austria); Bauhaus Dessau Foundation (Germany); and Museu Brasileiro da Escultura e Ecologia (Brazil), among others. He has represented Brazil at two International Architecture Exhibitions, La Biennale di Venezia; the 10th Mercosul Art Biennial, Porto Alegre, Brazil; and was a prizewinner at the 15th Buenos Aires International Biennial of Architecture.

For more information on the exhibition, Latinitudes
A Collection of Latin American Modern Architecture, click here.

Photo: Ricardo E Adame

Chicago-based artist Irene Hsiao presents 氣, a piece developed for performances across the Chicago Architecture Biennial and part of Hsiao's project Mond(e): 月亮代表我的心, named for the Taiwanese love song "The moon represents my heart." In 氣, Hsiao performs in response to a sculpture by artist and fellow Biennial participant Dominic Kießling, accompanied by soprano Mickey Farès. Inspired by the shifting phases of the moon and the impermanence of architecture and anatomy, the work explores the interplay of air and energy—氣 (qi)—as Kießling’s sculpture receives, amplifies, and returns each movement and emotion in a cycle of mutual transformation. Mond(e): 月亮代表我的心 – 氣 was developed at the Graham Foundation in fall 2025 for presentations at the Narrow Bridge Arts Club and the Driehaus Museum and Hsiao returns to the Madlener House for the closing presentation.

Mond(e): 月亮代表我的心 is a year-long performance and community art project developed through Hsiao's 2025 residency at Hyde Park Art Center, creating site-specific performances with new collaborators that evolve in reference to the moon's periodic phases and its influence. This program is partially supported by an Individual Artists Program Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, as well as a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, from federal funds through the National Endowment for the Arts.

Irene Hsiao creates dance and performance through object-driven inquiry with museum spaces, exhibitions, and artworks. She is the inaugural Artist in Residence at the Smart Museum, first Artist in Residence at 21c Museum Hotel Chicago, first Resident Artist at the Heritage Museum of Asian Art, a Radicle Resident at Hyde Park Art Center, and the first artist in residence at the Chinese Fine Arts Society.

Dominic Kießling is a visual artist whose practice transforms lightweight materials into large-scale kinetic installations animated by fans, hair dryers, or human performance. Born in Dresden in 1984, he studied industrial design before working for a decade in motion and stage design in Berlin. In 2019, he returned to Dresden to focus on analogue art, experimenting with everyday materials and immersive sculptural forms. In 2023, he established his studio in a former factory building to pursue one of his most ambitious projects. Starting with little more than plastic bags and a hair dryer, Kießling developed a dynamic aesthetic that blurs the line between object and organism. His work continues to explore themes of transformation, movement, and material tension.

Mickey Farès is a Chicago-based soprano and improviser with a rich cultural heritage rooted in Venezuela, Spain, and Lebanon. Trained in classical opera performance, her vocal practice explores the full elasticity of the human voice—stretching its expressive limits and weaving together a diverse range of sonic textures. Her improvisational style draws on the raw spontaneity of free jazz and the rich emotionality of Spanish folkloric singing, creating a unique and deeply embodied sound language. Collaborating with movement artists has become central to her work, where the interplay of physical and vocal expression allows for a dynamic exchange of energy between performers. At the heart of her artistic process is a commitment to shared energy—how it is passed, shaped, and amplified among collaborators. For Mickey, improvisation is a playground for presence, curiosity, and connection.

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