Museo Cao

The Fundación Wiese commissioned Claudia Uccelli to give the El Brujo archaeological complex, on Peru's northern coast, a museum for the Lady of Cao, the tattooed Moche ruler whose 2006 tomb find rewrote assumptions about women's authority in pre-Columbian Peru. Built in 2008–09 beside the Huaca Cao Viejo pyramid, the museum is organised as five modular pavilions in exposed concrete, their plan derived from Moche domestic layouts rather than a conventional gallery sequence; Uccelli has written that the voids between the pavilions are as much a part of the composition as their solid mass, comparing them to the silences in a piece of music. Concrete left unrendered is the building's only material, chosen to sit without competing against the earthen huaca beside it. Galleries hold textiles, ceramics and the mummy of the Lady of Cao herself, alongside an auditorium, laboratory and research rooms serving the archaeologists still excavating the site. The museum was shortlisted for the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize in 2014 and won the Silver Hexagon for the northern macro-region at Peru's XIV Architecture Biennial in 2010.