American Academy in Rome
Curated by Lindsay Harris, interim Andrew Heiskell Arts Director, and Elizabeth Rodini, interim Director.
Opening reception: Wednesday, April 13, 7:00 to 9:00pm
A Conversation/Conversazioni with two artists from the exhibition, Guillermo Kuitca (2022 Resident) and Sonya Clark (2017 Affiliated Fellow), will be held in conjunction with the opening from 6:00 to 7:00pm. The event will be moderated by Lindsay Harris, interim Andrew Heiskell Arts Director and cocurator of Regeneration.
Rome and its ruins have long provoked an aestheticization of decay—a meditation on the frailty of the physical world and the inevitable passage of time. Regeneration gathers the work of contemporary artists working across the globe to consider this paradigm with fresh eyes and push up against a paradox: that decay can seed a new, often beautiful materiality, whether of dust, rust, fragments, or weeds. Not far beyond these aesthetic matters lie ethical ones, concerning permanence and transmutation: how we conceive of and value change, and the struggles in choosing what to keep and what to let go.
These perspectives have a particular relevance to Rome and Italy. The Roman ruin is of course an archetype, while ancient Roman industry has left layers of dust still evident in the stratification of glacial ice. As an historic crossroads, Rome is also the nexus of cultural dialogues that span the globe from antiquity to the present. Regeneration invites us to consider this theme in Rome but also across differing geographic contexts, historical frames, and systems of value.
Wednesday, 13 April – Sunday, 12 June 2022
More information can be found here.