On view from October 1, 2025 through March 28, 2026

Onera Foundation - 63 Park Street, New Canaan, CT

Jorge Otero-Pailos

Treaties on De-Fences

On view from October 1, 2025 through March 28, 2026, the Onera Foundation’s inaugural exhibition will be Treaties on De-Fences, a special exhibition by Spanish-American artist and preservation architect Jorge Otero-Pailos whose practice probes the intersections of preservation and contemporary art. Exploring Otero-Pailos’ artistic intervention in the preservation of the Eero Saarinen-designed Cold War-era US Embassy in Oslo, Norway, the exhibition epitomizes the Onera Foundation’s distinctive approach in supporting cultural programming that can creatively advocate for the historic preservation of significant American architecture. Curated and produced by the Onera Foundation in close coordination with Otero-Pailos Studio, Treaties on De-Fences will span five galleries across the first two floors of 63 Park Street. 

In 2017, the US government decommissioned the Saarinen-designed embassy in Oslo — a modernist masterpiece. In his work as a preservation architect, Otero-Pailos participated in the four-year-long renovation of the embassy, lending his expertise in modernist architecture to guide the preservation plan. When the steel fence that had guarded the embassy was destined for destruction, Otero-Pailos chose to transform, bend, and twist the material into sculptures. Treaties on De-Fences will feature a selection of these sculptures, as well as a selection of prints by Otero-Pailos, inspired by the diplomatic treaties signed at the Oslo Embassy. All 51 prints are beautifully showcased in the artist’s book of prints that will also be on display in the galleries. A prior iteration  of the exhibition was presented at the National Museum of American Diplomacy, Washington D.C. in summer 2024.

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“My work seeks to dissolve the boundaries between art and preservation, showing how we can care for architecture by transforming it.
I hope this exhibition invites audiences to see preservation not as an end, but as a creative beginning.”
— Jorge Otero-Pailos