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Bassi Cendra

Giovanna M. Bassi Cendra

PhD Candidate

Department of Art History

CONTACT

gbassic@rice.edu

CURRICULUM VITAE

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Dissertation Title: Tectonics of Development: Mineral Extraction and the Architecture of the University-City in South America, 1945–1975
 

Advisor: Fabiola Lopez-Duran

Giovanna Bassi Cendra is a PhD Candidate specializing in the history of modern Latin American art and architecture, and has been a member of the Racial Geography Project since 2020. Her research focus is the entanglement of architecture with the ideology of “development” and extractive capitalism in South America during the postwar period. Her ongoing dissertation project, which interrogates the planning, design, and construction of university campuses vis-à-vis the intensification of mining and oil extraction in the region, received the Carter Manny Research Award from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts in 2020. Her project is also supported by the Wagoner Foreign Study Scholarship and the Rockefeller Foundation. Giovanna has collaborated with the Documents Project of the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston) and has written and published an award-winning essay on the work of Argentinean artist Gyula Kosice.

Publications

“La Ciudad Hidroespacial: Challenging the Functional City.” ICAA Documents Project Working Papers: The Publication Series for Documents of 20th-century Latin American and Latino Art 6 (December 2018): 4-15.

Co-author with Fabiola López-Durán. “Breather: John Sparagana’s Third Condition.” Introductory essay for John Sparagana: Breather exhibition brochure, Sicardi Gallery, Houston, TX, September 14–October 19, 2017. Available here.

Research Areas

Modern Latin American art; Architecture and urban planning in South America during the Era of International Development; Extractive urbanism in the Americas; Histories of spatial-racial segregation in Houston's Cradle of Culture

Education

M.A. University of Houston, 2015

M. Arch., Illinois Institute of Technology, 2007

M.A., Rice University, 2019

B. Arch., Universidad Ricardo Palma (Lima, Peru), 1999

Honors & Awards

2022 Brown Foundation Mentored Teaching Award (Department of Art History, Rice University)

2022 Carter Manny Research Award (Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts)

2020 Carter Manny Research Award (Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts)

2020 Rockefeller Archive Center Research Grant (Rockefeller Foundation)

2020 James T. Wagoner ’29 Foreign Study Scholarship

2019 Brown Foundation Dissertation Research Award

2019 James T. Wagoner ’29 Foreign Study Scholarship

2018 Summer Research Travel Award (Department of Art History, Rice University)

2017 Peter C. Marzio Award for Outstanding Research in 20th-Century Latin American and Latino Art (International Center for the Arts of the Americas, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston)

2014 Linda Schele Award for Art History Writing (School of Art, University of Houston)

2014 Friends of the Arts Scholarship (School of Art, University of Houston)

2014 Hohlt-Wich Scholarship (School of Art, University of Houston)

2006 Henry Adams Medal (American Institute of Architects)

2005 Epstein Architectural Scholarship (College of Architecture, Illinois Institute of Technology)

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