Image of Courtesy of Rosa Lowinger
Conservation is often understood as the careful effort to stabilize materials and meaning against the pressures of time. And yet, weather, use, and exposure have a way of unsettling that premise, forcing us to recalibrate what are the limits of care.
Author and art conservator Rosa Lowinger considers the constraints that define conservation for buildings and site-specific artworks, drawing on her extensive experience working on sites including Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels, the Miami Marine Stadium and Watts Towers, as well as her work as a consultant for the Conservation Master Plan for the Schindler House.
At Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels, set deep in a landscape that resists intervention, and the Schindler House, where experimental materials continue to live and strain under contemporary occupation, we encounter works that do not so much ask to be fixed as to be understood within the limits that shape them. Conservation in this context is a reflection on the tension between intervention and restraint—and how we live with the consequences of both.
This program is presented by the MAK Center in partnership with Holt/Smithson Foundation and Sprüth Magers as part of a series of public programs accompanying the exhibition Nancy Holt: Light and Shadow Poetics, on view at the MAK Center through May 24.
ROSA LOWINGER
Rosa Lowinger is a Cuban-American writer and architectural conservator. She is the founder of RLA Conservation, LLC, a firm based in Los Angeles and Miami, and has worked for decades on significant modern art and architecture. Most recently, she served as lead conservator for the Luna Luna Amusement Park and as the 2024 Judith Praska Distinguished Professor of Conservation at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts.
Rosa was the opening keynote speaker for the Docomomo U.S. 2024 Symposium and a 2009 Rome Prize Fellow in conservation at the American Academy in Rome. She holds an M.A. in art history and conservation from the Institute of Fine Arts and is among the few conservators who write regularly about the field for mainstream media.
Her books include Tropicana Nights: The Life and Times of the Legendary Cuban Nightclub; Promising Paradise: Cuban Allure, American Seduction; and Dwell Time: A Memoir of Art, Exile, and Repair. Luisa of the Sea, a children’s picture book about conservation co-authored with her husband, Todd Kessler, will be published in September 2026.
Related Exhibition
NANCY HOLT: LIGHT AND SHADOW POETICS
February 25, 2026 – May 24, 2026
Related Events
Opening Reception for Nancy Holt: Light and Shadow Poetics
Wednesday, February 25, 2026
7:00—9:00 PM
Nancy Holt: Screening of Sun Tunnels and Swamp
Thursday, April 9, 2026
6:00—8:00 PM
U.S. 80 SOLO Listening Session
Thursday, April 30, 2026
6:00—8:00 PM