Book Talk - Dwell Time: A Memoir of Art, Exile, and Repair

Please join the AIANY Historic Buildings Committee for book talk about Dwell Time: A Memoir of Art, Exile, and Repair (Row House Publishing, 2023) by art and architectural conservator Rosa Lowinger, who will be in conversation with architect Angel Ayón. Dwell Time is an immigrant’s story seen through an entirely new lens, that which connects the material to the personal and helps us see what is possible when one opens one’s heart to another person’s wounds. 

Inspired by and structured similarly to Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table, this first memoir by a working art conservator is organized by chapters based on the materials Lowinger handles in her thriving private practice – Marble, Limestone, Bronze, Ceramics, Concrete, Silver, Wood, Mosaic, Paint, Aluminum, Terrazzo, Steel, Glass and Plastics. Lowinger offers insider accounts of conservation that form the backbone of her immigrant family’s story of healing which beautifully juxtapose repair of the material with repair of the personal. Through Lowinger’s relentless clear-eyed efforts to be the best practitioner possible while squarely facing her fraught personal and work relationships, she comes to terms with her identity as Cuban and Jewish, American and Latinx.

Introduction:
Andrew Caracciolo, AIA, Co-chair, AIANY Historic Buildings Committee

Speakers:
Angel Ayón, AIA, NCARB, NOMA, LEED AP, Principal, AYON Studio Architecture and Preservation 
Rosa Lowinger, FAIC, writer and art conservator, RLA Conservation Art + Architecture

About the Speakers:
With over 25 years of historic building experience, Angel Ayón has developed a mission to not only preserve significant historic architecture but improve it—with more sustainable and resilient approaches, as well as contemporary technologies. He currently leads AYON Studio, a practice centered on this mission. Both an architect and preservationist, Ayón has practiced in his native Havana, Cuba, Washington, D.C., and New York City. His expertise ranges from building envelope evaluation and repair to full-scale rehabilitation. Ayón co-authored the award-winning book Reglazing Modernism – Intervention Strategies for 20th Century Icons and serves his community as Vice President of Save Harlem Now! and through his work with the Historic Districts Council, The Municipal Art Society of New York, the Preservation League of NY State, and the James Marston Fitch Charitable Foundation.

Rosa Lowinger is founder and Co-Chief Conservator of RLA Conservation Art + Architecture. She has over 30 years of experience as a conservator of sculpture, contemporary art, and historic buildings. She holds an M.A. in art history and conservation from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts, and is a Fellow of the American Institute for Conservation, the Association for Preservation Technology, the American Academy in Rome and the International Center for Conservation in Rome (ICCROM). Lowinger’s long and varied career has included fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania’s archeological museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and field conservator positions for the joint University of Pennsylvania-Tel Aviv University Expedition to the Coastal Plain of Israel. She was the founder of the Los Angeles firm Sculpture Conservation Studio and served as its director of conservation from 1988-2008. Lowinger lectures frequently on public art and conservation of modern finishes. A lively public speaker on topics for the general public, she was a featured speaker at the 2018 Miami Beach Art Deco weekend and the 2016 AIA meeting in Havana, Cuba. She co-curated the 2013 exhibits Concrete Paradise: Miami Marine Stadium at the Coral Gables Museum, and Promising Paradise: Cuban Allure, American Seduction at the Wolfsonian in 2016,; is the author of articles in Preservation, ArtNews, the Cuban Art News, WNYC.com; and is most well-known for the 2006 non-fiction book Tropicana Nights: The Life and Times of the Legendary Cuban Nightclub. Her memoir Dwell Time: A Memoir of Art, Exhile, and Repair was released in October 2023.