Opening Keynote: Modern Materials, Tropical Identities: Preservation as a Tool for Personal and Communal Repair

Cosford Cinema

5030 Brunson Dr
Coral Gables, FL

Speakers

Rosa Lowinger

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Opening Keynote: Modern Materials, Tropical Identities: Preservation as a Tool for Personal and Communal Repair

Cuban-born American art conservator and founder of RLA Conservation of Art + Architecture, LLC, Rosa Lowinger kicks off the Symposium the evening of Wednesday, May 29, “Modern Materials, Tropical Identities: Preservation as a Tool for Personal and Communal Repair.”

Lowinger discusses the links between historic preservation and healing of intergenerational trauma using examples from her family’s story of double exile from Eastern Europe to Cuba and then the United States. Based on her 2023 memoir Dwell Time: A Memoir of Art, Exile, and Repair, this presentation highlights the specific challenges of conserving twentieth-century materials in tropical and marine climates and the metaphors for and dealing with coastal conservation in the period of climate change.

The Opening Keynote takes place in the midcentury Cosford Cinema on the University of Miami campus; a reception at the Lowe Art Museum follows.

Keynote Speaker

Rosa Lowinger

Rosa Lowinger is a Cuban-born American art conservator and founder of RLA Conservation of Art + Architecture, LLC, a sculpture and architectural materials conservation practice based in Miami and Los Angeles. She is also a published author, most well-known for Tropicana Nights: The Life and Times of the Legendary Cuban Nightclub (Harcourt, 2005), a book on Havana’s pre-Castro nightclub era; Promising Paradise: Cuban Allure American Seduction (FIU press: 2016); and Dwell Time: A Memoir of Art, Exile, and Repair (Row House, 2023). A Fellow of the American Institute for Conservation, the Association for Preservation Technology, and the American Academy in Rome, Rosa holds an M.A. in Art History and Conservation from NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts.

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