Art with an Expert: Photography and the Modern Imagination of Colonial Mexico with Kathryn O’Rourke

Tickets to Art with an Expert include admission to Blanton All Day: A Very Haas Halloween

Learn how photography of colonial buildings informed debates about the character of modern Mexican architecture. Photography was central to John McAndrew’s groundbreaking research on sixteenth-century Mexican architecture. His captivating images stood in an impressive lineage of works by architectural photographers from Mexico and the US who, like McAndrew, were compelled by the sculptural and formal power of buildings at the heart of the colonial project. Straddling art and documentary photography, these images not only advanced scholarship, but helped fuel the idea of Mexican exceptionalism, informed debates about the character of modern Mexican architecture, and helped nurture a romantic image of the country that appealed to Mexican and foreign tourists alike.