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. She serves on the boards of the Amigos of the Cuban Heritage Collection at University of Miami, Florida Association of Museums, the Partnership for Sacred Places, and the Florida Association of Public Art Professionals.
A hands-on working conservator, Rosa’s writing focuses on the confluence between material culture, memory, and repair. She has done extensive research on the conservation of twentieth century concrete and mosaics as well as Painted Outdoor Sculpture and the history of vandalism. She serves as a regular consultant to the Getty Conservation Institute and co-curated the exhibits Promising Paradise: Cuban Allure American Seduction (Wolfsonian Museum, 2016) and Concrete Paradise: Miami Marine Stadium (Coral Gables Museum, 2013. Rosa’s 1999 cover story on Havana for Preservation Magazine spawned a career in cultural travel that has taken her to Cuba over 100 times since 1992.
She divides her time between Los Angeles and Miami.