The New Oxford American dictionary defines vandalism as both “an action involving deliberate destruction of or damage to public or private property,” and as “a deliberate, unauthorized act that is intentional and done in order to alter, make a mark in or purposely damage art, architecture or public places.” Using research that began at the American Academy in Rome in 2009 and continues through the current debate on contested monuments, Rosa Lowinger will examine historical precedents for vandalism as a meaningful method of exchanging ideas and altering codified narratives about public art and spaces.

Rosa Lowinger is President and Chief Conservator of RLA Conservation of Art + Architecture, a firm with offices in Miami and Los Angeles specializing in outdoor sculpture and integrated architectural artworks.  A graduate of the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU, she is a Fellow of the American Institute for Conservation, the Association for Preservation Technology, and the American Academy in Rome, where she studied the history of vandalism during her 2008-09 Rome Prize. Rosa has served as guest editor for the Vandalism issue of the University of Pennsylvania's journal Change Over Time and writes regularly for mainstream media about culture, conservation, and historic preservation in her native Cuba. She co-curated Concrete Paradise: Miami Marine Stadium at the Wolfsonian Museum and Promising Paradise: Cuban Allure, American Seduction at the Coral Gables Museum. She is the author of the nonfiction book Tropicana Nights: The Life and Times of the Legendary Cuban Nightclub (Harcourt, 2005). For more information, please see www.rosalowinger.com.

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