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The temporary exhibition, “City and Sky: Santiago 1850, The Capital before its Modernization”, brings together the photographs and writings left by an astronomical expedition from the United States that visited the city in the mid-nineteenth century.
Led by naval officer and astronomer James Melville Gilliss, the expedition to the Southern Hemisphere was organized to measure the parallax between Mars and Venus as a means of calculating the distance between Earth and the sun. Chile was the last stop on its itinerary and, from among the different sites offered by the government of the time for the installation of an observatory, Gilliss chose Santiago’s Santa Lucía Hill.
As well as astronomical observatories, the scientific history of Santa Lucía includes its use as a location for seismographs. It is also remembered because its redesign was one of the principal projects undertaken by politician, historian and writer, Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, who served as Santiago’s Governor 1872 and 1875.
The exhibition is the result of research led by Germán Hidalgo, an architect from the Catholic University of Chile, who holds a PhD in Theory and History of Architecture from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia. The project was supported by Chile’s National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development (FONDECYT).
Hidalgo explains that, as well as reflecting how Gilliss perceived the city, the exhibition also covers the expedition’s astronomical achievements. The project was able to relate architecture, urban planning and culture, thanks to the work of the interdisciplinary group of researchers and professionals who studied the records left by the expedition.
