Patricio del Real, Associate Professor of Art and Architecture at Harvard University, talks about his new book Constructing Latin America: Architecture, Politics and Race at the Museum of Modern Art. It’s the fascinating story of how race, gender, politics and even climate control formed the tapestry of Latin American modernist architecture and how it was projected through MOMA.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Patricio Del Real is Associate Professor of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. He's also the author of the forthcoming book, Constructing Latin America: Architecture, Politics, and Race at the Museum of Modern Art. Patricio, welcome.
Patricio Del Real:
Thank you. Thank you for the invitation to join you on the podcast at DRCLAS.
June Carolyn Erlick:
You've just written this book about Latin American modern architecture and the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA as it's called for short. You talk about having been the curatorial assistant for a major 2015 show there about Latin American Architecture. I know that's the genesis of the book, but could you tell us with a bit more detail about how you got the idea for this book? When did you know you wanted to write a book?
Patricio Del Real:
I will actually go back, way back, to always being curious of Latin America, what Latin America was, while growing up in Puerto Rico with Cuban parents. Growing up in the Caribbean in Puerto Rico, the question of identity or belonging was always kind of there, it was always in the air, so that brought with me a curiosity about this region, this idea called Latin America. So that's a question I've been pursuing from different perspectives for a while, I could say, but again, to answer directly your question, is that the genesis of the book was my PhD dissertation that I did when I came to New York in 2005. So that's the start of trying to manage it within a theoretical construct.
Patricio Del Real:
It's interesting because I originally intended to write or do research on the impact of informal housing in modern architecture in Latin America. And this was actually came about from weeks long research they have been doing in Cuba, actually, informal housing in Cuba. So my research took a different turn, let's say. During the PhD studies, when I did a course on architectural historiography, I took on this quite prominent US architectural historian, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, who had done this seminal exhibition at MoMA, Latin American Architecture, since 1945.
Patricio Del Real:
This is a show that everyone cites and everyone has a comment about it, but no one has really looked deeply into this exhibition. And I thought it really deserved much more focused research, but also to take it from different angles than the ones that have been cited and was generally used in the scholarship and in the world of architecture.
June Carolyn Erlick:
So you went from informal housing to the MoMA?
Patricio Del Real:
Yes, to follow a completely, completely different path, right? But all within the history of modern architecture. I was always very interested in understanding how the dispersive practices, the way we talk about modern architecture, conditions our ideas of the world, how we interpret the world, how we map the world, why is the informality or slums or whatnot, was positioned in a particular way in the histories of architecture or not at all, right? That was kind of my interest. So when I shifted to the idea of Latin America, it did retain toward the element of the narratives and the story of modern architecture, right, that has become very, very important in the study of architecture.
June Carolyn Erlick:
So you decided to write this dissertation and then this book, could you tell us a bit about some of the obstacles you faced researching the book?
Patricio Del Real:
One of the things that changed from the dissertation to the book, perhaps one of the obstacles, was the emphasis on the focus on race, which was something that, at the time I was doing the dissertation to be very honest, people did not feel very comfortable in supporting. I really did want to, with the book, go back to all my research and go back to the conception of the book and understand how the question of race and then the question of genders played within this larger narrative.
Patricio Del Real:
It's interesting that even some people cautioned me against using the word race on the title, which is interesting how things have changed from then to now. So the book does take on those two questions, race and gender, and it continues with the theme of politics, right, which was there from the start. In that sense, to be also honest, I think one of the obstacles was the writing of one of the chapters, chapter three, And Brazil Builds, because this is an exhibition that has been very well studied. But because it was a well studied one, I didn't really want to write about it because everything has been said, "What can I add?"
Patricio Del Real:
But then, because I returned to this question of race and the question of gender, I started to build on this and really amplifying, if you will, or reconnecting this exhibition to a question, which I found very important and I truly believe is there, which is this construction of race that is fundamental to understand the imaginary of Latin America in the United States, and how this mobilized and used in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, in this case.
Patricio Del Real:
So what I try to do then is then to follow these threads and see how they are then connected beyond architecture exhibitions, into fashion, into fashion magazines, into general popular culture in the United States. And of course, how it's also connected with the governmental apparatus, if you will, the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs and the machinery of pan-Americanism, in this particular case with Brazil Builds, but then how that continues in different ways after Brazil Builds and how actually it's already inaugurated in exhibitions before this seminal show that everybody kind of knows, which is Brazil Builds.
Patricio Del Real:
The question of acquiring a photograph became a complication because I was actually finishing the book during the pandemic, so the archives were closed. It took a lot of work and a lot of goodwill and help from people, for example, at MoMA who actually went beyond, they were incredibly helpful, in order to acquire a photograph that actually have never been seen before of particular shows. That is one of the most recent obstacles, if you will, of developing the book.
June Carolyn Erlick:
One of the things that really fascinated me was how you were always bringing out these threads, but you still use the structure of this exhibit and that exhibit and that exhibit. So would you mind telling our listeners what were the major exhibits you experienced?
Patricio Del Real:
Well, there were large, very complicated exhibitions that now you look back and you wonder, "How did they get away with this?" Without the internet or without the communications that we have today. For example, Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art that was done in 1940, and it's a massive, massive show and it occupied the entire modernist building of MoMA. We have Brazil Builds that was done in 1943, and then of course, Latin American Architecture since 1945, which was staged in '55.
Patricio Del Real:
But then there were also smaller shows that perhaps are not as blockbusters, if you will, such as From Le Corbusier to Niemeyer. There's a series of shows that then are also woven into other events or symposia in which I try then to create this tapestry of projects, of shows, of exhibitions. What the book argues is what I call the Serial Function of Exhibitions, is that we should go beyond studying single exhibitions and that we need to see how they are intertwined and interconnected and how these leave a curatorial trail through, in this case, MoMA as the institution. I would argue that this happens in every museum. They have this curatorial trail that you can start putting together, so you can understand how exhibitions press on curatorial agendas of a cultural institution like MoMA.
June Carolyn Erlick:
But don't you think that changes according to the curators? Or do you think there's an institutional vision?
Patricio Del Real:
I believe there's both and there's then the conflict between both. I truly believe that institutions have a mission and that they move forward with that mission. In this case, I believe that MoMA had a very clear agenda of establishing a cultural center of modernism in the United States. This was the called project, and many scholars have argued for this and I think proven this without any doubt. But also then you have the internal agendas of the people who formed the institution, which are very important.
Patricio Del Real:
So what the book does, it looks at the confrontations, the moment of crisis, if you will, the tears in the tapestry, from when curators have a confrontation. To give you a very clear example, in 1946, to the surprise of many, Philip Johnson returns to MoMA. Philip Johnson had left in the mid-thirties to establish a fascist party in the United States. He was a declared fascist. Then he went supposedly through a period of conversion of non-fascism. There's much to be argued about that, but nonetheless, he entered the US military.
Patricio Del Real:
He went to Harvard, he became an architect, and then suddenly, in 1946, he returns to MoMA. First, not officially as an advisor and then in '49, he becomes the director again. So when he comes back, he is gung ho to establish his agenda and starts to have confrontations with not only curators, but also some of the people who have long worked at the museum. It's very interesting because at this time, because of the war, a lot of the men have left either for the war front or for Washington, and then women are put in charge of many of the curatorial departments and their curatorial agendas.
Patricio Del Real:
So when Philip Johnson comes back in '46, he has this confrontations with Elodie Courter. And Elodie Courter, who's a fascinating figure, she is the Director or the Head of the Department of Circulating Exhibitions since its inception in the early thirties, she is really the person responsible for MoMA's projection outside of New York. She's a fabulous figure, an incredible figure that deserves much, much, much more research on her. But to put this story short, this intense confrontation, and there all these really interesting memos back and forth between Johnson and Courter, and in the end, what happens is that she resigns and then Johnson's able to, at least within the Department of Architecture, to complete the takeover.
Patricio Del Real:
And this is a very interesting moment, again, as we pointed out of the curatorial agendas of departments that are either being supported or contested or criticized by the overall museum. So we have these two institutional missions and then who are the people who actually determine the institutional mission? It's a moment of great crises at the museum, and the return of Philip Johnson, which is something that needs to be explored even further, speaks to the volatility of the institution, but also the period itself.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Speaking of gender, you had talked in the book of not just her, but of all these women who kind of took over MoMA and other museums, even though you do mention some post-war women photographers and art critics, but I don't get a good sense from your book about what actually happened to women curators, postwar at MoMA in particular and US museums in general. So what was the role of women in postwar cultural management?
Patricio Del Real:
Well, the book focuses on the Museum of Modern Art. And then we could argue if this is a microcosm of the other cultural institutions in the United States or not. We could draw parallels, but I can only speak to this particular moment at MoMA. We do know that through the ranks, some brilliant women are able to rise through the ranks in the architectural department like Elizabeth Mock, for example, very important figure, that becomes director of the department until again, this moment when the war ends, the men are coming back to occupy the positions that they used to have.
Patricio Del Real:
And this is also why the return of Philip Johnson is very troubling in that way. I put this in the book, this very fascinating memorandum, confidential memorandum, to one of the advisors of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, on the amount of power that women had amassed in the museum because of the war. Basically, in the end, they're saying that the museum is filled with feline gossip, for example, that women are having way too much power. There's this comment about pussy pants. I'm really not familiar, but it sounds actually quite derogatory, but also about a museum that is, and I quote, "Infiltrated by Jews."
Patricio Del Real:
This incredible radiography, radiografía in Spanish one would say, of the culture of the moment during the war that speaks to that period, captured in this one memorandum that in the end called for the return of the good businessman. But what's fascinating is that this is actually forwarded to Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, who's one of the three women who have founded the Museum of Modern Art. I never found a reply to this, so one never knows exactly how this was taken by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, one can only guess.
Patricio Del Real:
But nonetheless, it is clear that it was filled with this type of conversation, this type of commentary was not only allowed, but also needed. That tells you a lot of the position of women in cultural institutions at this time. And then the fact that as the war starts to end, the men starts to come back and women are either being demoted or they find that there's not a good working atmosphere and they start to quit, that was a situation that women curators were suffering at MoMA at the time.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Do you think gender makes a difference in how you shape a museum?
Patricio Del Real:
I think we all experience the world in different ways. So yes, I would argue it also has to do with a way that one is treated, in particular Christian institutions. If one is giving the merit or the value that one deserved, all of that affects the working relation and the working atmosphere that we have. In any institution, not only at MoMA, gender is a way to experience the world and experience acultural institutions. I would say also, other than gender, an interesting facet will be also sexuality, for example, that most of the architectural department at MoMA have been gay men.
Patricio Del Real:
So I think that also is actually quite an interesting frame to look at this interpersonal politics that are being created in these departments in quite intense situations. There are very difficult times. The war must have been incredibly difficult, I mean, one can only imagine, so you already have an intense situation and intense working relationship, so all this complicates the production of culture, and one could argue, also marks the production of culture.
Patricio Del Real:
So I think what the book tries to do without over determining the exhibitions is just to bring these questions, these relationships, and these confrontations to light. But in the end, also look at the exhibitions for what they are, exhibitions, and look how they were composed, look what are the ideas, how the staging was performed, what architectural ideas were tried. Even with all these problems, even with all these conflicts, people still did the work and they still produced these amazing shows.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Well, just keeping on the subject of gender and sexuality a minute, I was really interested in your descriptions of how MoMA exhibits in Latin American Architecture in general were projected in fashion design and home magazines. Can you talk a bit about that?
Patricio Del Real:
So I found it quite fascinating, that connection. I also find it quite fascinating, the ability to trace this relationship, to trace this kind of ideas more than just simple echoes, right? But be able to actually find that, for example, the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs was very much invested in creating these networks, these Inter-American networks. So it's not only that we see an article on Peru, for example, in Peruvian fashion or Mexican architecture or Brazilian architecture, right? As an echo, there was pan-Americanism in the air.
Patricio Del Real:
We can argue very soft reverberations, but when you actually look at the archive, you can actually see that is constructed, that there is political will, that there is also political value to create these imaginaries through the shelter journals or the popular press. The way they are interpreted, well, that's beyond the mechanisms of creating the circulation, but it was clear because of the concept of psychological warfare that we had to create an atmosphere in the United States to change the long held stereotypes of Latin America that such infrastructure had to be created.
Patricio Del Real:
The Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs that afterwards became the Office of Inter-American Affairs, operated very much to produce that change. And they would mobilize every possible means that US culture and then US commerce could actually do. So it's actually very fascinating when you have a building in Brazil done by Lucia Costa in Rio de Janeiro, which is an upper class, upper-middle class, apartment building in Rio de Janeiro, that suddenly appears in House Beautiful. How could this happen?
Patricio Del Real:
Well, obviously there is a whole machinery that has been going on for some time, but then what one starts to look at on these travel articles is that in 1950, to my surprise, these type of articles were actually promoting the racial ideology of Brazil, of miscegenation. They were actually blatantly in the 1950s saying, "Oh, look at Brazil, look at this wonderful modern architecture. Look at this wonderful open culture. It is the product of the mixing of the races." I mean, for me to say that in the journal in 1950s, it's astounding.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Something I just couldn't get my head around because you have this projection of idealized race relations in Latin America, and yet we're talking about a period that's way before the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, and the United States government seems to be promoting it. Can you explain a little bit about that?
Patricio Del Real:
I can only point to the evidence that I've found. How do we overall explain this bizarre mobilization? I think much, much more research has to do in relation to architecture culture and everyday culture. One of the aims of the book, what I wanted with the book, is to really start to build, at least as an example in relation to MoMA, this relation between the Americas. How ideas, cultural notions, even cultures of race, actually circulating across the Americas to actually shape US culture. That is not only United States exporting culture to Latin America and to the world, but actually the United States is actually receptive of cultural projects, for better or worse, that are being produced in Latin America.
Patricio Del Real:
And I think what the book actually proves is that one of these polls is the Museum of Modern Art, was the node of circulation of idea that are produced in Latin America, and they are sort of a node in a center of propagation. It's not only that these exhibitions were shown in New York. These exhibitions traveled across entire United States. Brazil Builds, it was performed for the first time in 1943, but it actually circulated across the United States to high schools, to schools, to community centers till 1950.
Patricio Del Real:
So we have this promotion of these beautiful modernist architecture, these tropical environments, but also, still in the 1950s as this House Beautiful article proves, connected to this racial ideology. Of course, it's a completely idealized, right, racial ideology, but I think one starts to then locate it in the context of what is happening in the United States. It has to do also with the fact that the United States has gone out from a white supremacist war, right?
Patricio Del Real:
The United States is still segregated, legally. For better or worse, Brazil, Mexico, and Latin America, perhaps as a whole, is imagined as an alternative, right? "Let's look what's happening there because it seems like they got it right. Somehow they got it right and we could learn something from Latin America." And this was very clear with Brazilian modernist and when Brazil Built was staged. This argument of, "We can learn from Brazil," was very clearly stated by the museum. Now, which lessons that we can argue in a more [foreign language 00:21:34], as I say, right?
June Carolyn Erlick:
Well, when you're talking about which lessons, I'm also intrigued by this contradiction or tension between the projection of architecture as democracy by the US government and MoMA's sort of a modernizing transparency, but many of the countries that are being highlighted like Brazil, Argentina, the relationship with post-coup Guatemala, they all had authoritarian governments. So is that at the time blatantly overlooking reality or wishful thinking or what's going on?
Patricio Del Real:
I believe there's completely blatant, overlooking reality. That is quite intentional and that is not innocent. The fact that again, Brazil Builds overlooks and completely recasts Vargas, not as a dictator, like as a progressive presidency, that was crafted from the beginning, that was political made, absolutely. The fact, for example, that MoMA in Chicago in 1955, completely overlooked that there is a military government in Venezuela, in Caracas, right? That is actually advancing all these great modernist works. Now that is completely erased. That is part of the political agendas of the exhibitions, absolutely.
Patricio Del Real:
There's this undercurrent, right, within the discourse. This is very clear in some of the documents I found in the state department, but you can actually hear very clear reverberations of this, that authoritarian regimes were necessary for the region. And again, this is when we go back to gendered or racial biases that the US imaginary had on Latin America, is that these people down there, they really need strong masculine figure, right? Or also there's the question of imagining Latin Americans as children, so they need a strong authoritarian father figure.
Patricio Del Real:
This is a chapter that I titled Our Man At MoMA, where there is this very fascinating figure, René d'Harnoncourt, who is representing MoMA, trying to expand their services, exhibitions, also have books, the member centers spending membership. But he's also, at the same time, this is 1945, he's also blatantly spying for Nelson Rockefeller, who is at the state department at this time. And he is sent, there's this fabulous letters, where Rockefeller tells him, "I want you to, under the cover of MoMA, go and actually see what is the political temperature of the region," because there has been reports of great propaganda by the Soviet Union, 1945 is the beginning of the formation of the United Nations. So there's need to know where Latin America sits politically.
Patricio Del Real:
And d'Harnoncourt travels the region and he meets with all these people, and he's actually gathering all this information. And one of these conclusions, the rise of leftist idea, it was that there's really not to worry because Latin Americans really cannot handle this kind of political ideology. Even the Soviets don't trust them because they're basically saying, "They're children playing at grown up politics, so that should not be our concern." I think that's part of this instrumental and very obvious overlooking of the political realities and also the social realities of Latin American countries.
Patricio Del Real:
It's also staggering that a person like René d'Harnoncourt is able to travel the region and talk about the, "No need to worry about social upheaval," without considering the actual state of societies in Latin America. Again, I think this is simply an instrumentalized view of Latin America for a particular gain.
June Carolyn Erlick:
Throughout the book, you talk about the use of architecture as cultural propaganda and lay out a strong case of how exhibits were used to promote pan-Americanism, and later, neoliberal corporate values. In other words, the exhibits, although they had high aesthetic value, were very political. But I'm really curious, you passingly mentioned the Cuban Revolution and the gap in Latin American major exhibitions at MoMA between the fifties and nineties, but why wasn't there more involvement during that period? It's not only Cuba. We're talking about the Sandinistas Revolution, the conflicts in Central America, the whole world is watching, why not MOMA?
Patricio Del Real:
It's an interesting gap. In the conclusion of the book, I start to bring out other projects too, and attempt to create exhibitions that intersect in somehow Latin America. So I don't believe that they were not paying attention. I think people knew, at least architecturally, and again, I'm always speaking from the Department of Architecture and Design, right, which is one department within a very complex institution. So it's not that they did not know. They know what's going on. And there were moments where the architecture was incorporated in shows. But by then, I think there are certainly many reasons. The agendas of the museum and many museum, they change over time.
Patricio Del Real:
Also, you need people who are invested in particular ideas, in particular regions, in particular themes, to actually carry forth particular projects that are as complex as exhibitions. It also has to do with what agendas are institutionalized within the museum. And what is fascinating about MoMA is that MoMA does institutionalized its international projection, basically doing exhibitions abroad, et cetera, with what's called the International Program. It institutionalizes this group that aim to help in the international projection that MoMA called the International Council, which is basically a group of high-powered people from across the world that come as a group to help promote the project of the international program.
Patricio Del Real:
So within that there are attempts to engage and reengage the region in particular ways. I do believe that the Cuban Revolution makes things very sensitive and quite difficult. The ability to actually just in 1955, '54, '55, send the prime architecture historian to Latin America to gather examples, and this for a show, right? I think by 1960, it is clear that you can't do that anymore. So the situation in the region actually has changed also, so that's actually quite important as a overall culture. At the same time, when we look at architectural culture itself, I think architectural culture in the United States, and in the Department of Architecture, is focused on the crisis of modernism.
Patricio Del Real:
And what is seen in Latin America, one could argue that people at MoMA, particularly Arthur Drexler, who was the director of the department, would see that with the Hitchcock show enough was done and no more was needed. And that kind of trajectory of modernism in Latin America, resolved itself, if we will, in 1960 with Brasilia, in that nothing more needed to be said. And it's unbelievable because the Department of Architecture is completely silent on perhaps what is one of the largest architecture engineering and infrastructural projects of the mid-20th century, right? Which is Brasilia.
Patricio Del Real:
I mean, a whole city, a whole city being created. And what do they say? Nothing, absolutely nothing, which is actually bizarre. Again, it is not that they're not cognizant of what is happening. There is a person there at MoMA, Emilio Ambasz, who in 1976 will put the Luis Barragàn show. So then that becomes a very important show, but it's completely conceptualized as a move away from this tradition of architectural modernism, with that, the cultural conditions, the cultural understanding, the cultural interpretations of the architecture that's being produced in Latin America has completely changed. And the world also has become quite bigger.
Patricio Del Real:
Ambasz also had, in the seventies, he had this amazing project on trying to develop industrial design in Latin America by creating an industrial design center in Buenos Aires, that in the end never happens because of very complicated politics of Argentina. There's been interest but then there has been very few projects that have consolidated.
June Carolyn Erlick:
You described the region as a quote, "Architectural think-tank." Is that still true today?
Patricio Del Real:
I hope so.
June Carolyn Erlick:
There's so much to talk about. I mean, we've only scratched the surface. People are going to have to read your book. But do you have a new project?
Patricio Del Real:
I do have several projects in the work. One, I'm taking up the longstanding research on the Valparaiso School, a project that I've been interested for a very long time. And this has to do with a question of future or a future in architecture, can architecture imagine, the future that is architecture create or reopen spaces of hope? So that's a project that I'm restarting now.
June Carolyn Erlick:
That sounds fascinating. Anything else you'd like to add for our listeners?
Patricio Del Real:
I hope that people have the chance to check out the book. We're planning a book launch in Cambridge with DRCLAS on October 4th, so maybe you can join us and I hope to see you there. And I hope you enjoy the book. And thank you for inviting me to share these thoughts.
June Carolyn Erlick:
You've been listening to Patricio Del Real, Associate Professor of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. He's also the author of the forthcoming book, Constructing Latin America: Architecture, Politics, and Race at the Museum of Modern Art. Thank you for joining Faculty Voices, Patricio, and congratulations on your new book.
Patricio Del Real:
Thank you so much.