Michael Moynihan will present a talk titled “Indigenismos and National Identity,” which will investigate the impact of the Mexican Revolution on architecture. Art, architecture, and spatial practices became central tools in the cultural and political project of modern Mexico after the Revolution. At the same time, ideas such as raza cósmica, mestizaje, and indigenismo shaped the production of state-sponsored visual culture and modern architecture. This lecture will demonstrate how the construction of national identity was a complex and constantly evolving project in the first half of the twentieth century, blending imaginations of modernity and indigeneity while addressing both domestic and international audiences.

Michael Moynihan is the Land, Space, and Identity in the Americas Fellow at the University of Texas, Austin. His research focuses on the global history of housing during the Cold War/development era and broader questions about politics, technology, and expertise in architectural practice. He is currently working on a book manuscript titled Systems Will Prevail: Global Housing and the Decline of the Professional Architect, which explains why in the 1970s a quarter of the world’s architects suddenly found themselves unemployed and contextualizes how a shift in expertise related to international housing policy has shaped the education, careers, and salaries of architects in the past five decades.

Image: Diego Rivera, The Marriage of the Artistic Expression of the North and of the South on This Continent, also known as Pan American Unity, 1940; the central panel; courtesy City College of San Francisco; © Banco de México Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico City / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Image: Cultural Heritage Imaging