Magid agrees with those who argue that the Barragán archive should be open to the public and returned to Mexico, but she insists that this is not her focus. “If that’s what my intentions were, I don’t think I’d make art,” she told me. “I’ve always called the archive her lover. To marry one man, she negotiated owning another man, whom she’s devoted her life to. It’s a weird love triangle, and I’m the other woman.” — The New Yorker
“‘It intrigued me as a gothic love story,’ [Magid] said, ‘with a copyright-and-intellectual-property-rights subplot.’”
A fascinating story about “architectural preservation” that focuses on an artist's elaborate negotiation to open Luis Barragán's tightly controlled archive to the public in his native Mexico — and the unusual “love triangle” behind it. The story begins with conceptual artist Jill Magid, whose work questions the boundaries of institutional power and law. In her latest performance art piece, Magid had Barragán's ashes compressed into a 2.02 carat diamond, which was transformed into an engagement ring for architectural historian Federica Zanco. Magid would then “propose” to Zanco in exchange for Barragán's entire archive.
Zanco first received the archive as a gift from a Swiss businessman who purchased it and the copyrights for $3 million in 1995, in lieu of an engagement ring. Since then, everyone from architects to students to museum staff members have been denied access to the body of work.
More on Archinect:
Luis Barragán Homage Tweaks Vitra, the Copyright Owners
Mexico City’s new and vivacious architecture
The House and Studio of Luis Barragán is now inscribed in Unesco's World Heritage List
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"Louis Kahn recalled that, in the sixties, he asked Barragán to help him design the courtyard garden at the Salk Institute and flew him out to San Diego to see the site. Barragán took one look at the expanse of concrete and said, “You are going to hate me, but there should be no tree here,” and went home, forsaking a commission from one of his most famous living colleagues."
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