São Paulo Museum of Modern Art

This guide to the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art returns to 1951, when judges at the city's first great art contest gave the grand prize for sculpture not to a Brazilian painter but to Max Bill, a Swiss engineer and typographer, for a twisted loop of steel called Tripartite Unity. It follows the outrage that decision caused among Brazilian critics, and how a young sculptor named Lygia Clark, standing in front of Bill's steel band, called it her first big discovery. The building itself was raised under Niemeyer's marquee and later reshaped by Lina Bo Bardi.