No. 9

Conceived and designed by architect Frida Escobedo (Mexico City), the exhibition No. 9 explores the history of La Ruta de la Amistad (“Route of Friendship”) in Mexico City, a monumental public sculpture project that was launched as part of the cultural program for the 1968 Olympics. Presenting archival research and a new sculptural installation, the exhibition probes the optimism and underlying contradictions of this ambitious convergence of artistic vision, urban development, and international diplomacy.

Sited along an eleven-mile stretch of Mexico City’s then burgeoning highway system, La Ruta de la Amistad comprised a network of nineteen monumental sculptures, or “stations,” by artists from seventeen countries. German-born Mexican artist Mathias Goeritz served as artistic advisor of the 1968 Olympic Organizing Committee and was director of La Ruta. His open-ended brief called for the sculptures to be abstract, made of concrete, and monumental in size, since they would be experienced from the perspective of a moving car. Upon completion, each was painted in bright colors. The multinational and modernist aesthetics of La Ruta’s sculptures amplified government efforts to present Mexico as a thriving, cosmopolitan nation on the global stage of the Olympics — the first games hosted by a Latin American country. Since then, many of the sculptures have been moved as part of a heritage initiative, and the “Route of Friendship” now only exists in the collective imagination.