Rosa Lowinger

ARCHITECTURE AS ART: CHALLENGES AND DECISIONS IN CONSERVING THE MIAMI MARINE STADIUM

Please join the Historic Preservation program at GSAPP for a lecture by Rosa Lowinger, a Cuban-born American art conservator and writer who is both a Fellow of the American Institute for Conservation and the Association for Preservation Technology.

Materials conservators are trained to be rescuers of historic fabric. We bring a set of knowledge to a problem, and we problem solve in the hopes of making a difference. But sometimes -often, actually- outside forces determine outcomes that are unsatisfactory. We are forced to rein in our concerns based on the exigencies of budgets, public opinion, and forces that work against historic fabric.

This presentation will discuss these matters as they have impacted conservation of the Miami Marine Stadium, a 1963 waterfront grandstand that is currently the site of an extensive graffiti program. Serving as advocate for the stadium, curator of an exhibit about its history, and lead conservator for its rehabilitation, the author will present the technical and social issues surrounding the conservation of this building while exploring what she has learned about confronting limitations, impasses, naysaying clients, one’s own personal impulse to act rashly, and the unthinkable- the potential loss of a modernist treasure.

Rosa Lowinger is the author of Tropicana Nights: The Life and Times of the Legendary Cuban Nightclub (Harcourt: 2006) and Dwell Time: A Memoir of Art, Exile, and Repair (Row House: 2023). A graduate of NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, she is the founder of RLA Conservation, LLC (www.rlaconservation.com), a practice with offices in Los Angeles and Miami. She was also the 2009 Conservation Fellow at American Academy in Rome, where she conducted research on the history of vandalism to art and public space. She was the Fall 2024 Judith Praska Distinguished professor in Conservation at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts and is currently teaching a class on 20th century building materials at the University of Miami School of architecture.

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The Preservation Lecture Series is organized by the MS in Historic Preservation program.