Last week, a capacity audience filled the ODC Dance Theater in San Francisco for the latest installment of Conversations | Conversazioni: From the American Academy in Rome. The event, a panel discussion on the design of museums and cultural spaces, featured speakers offering unique perspectives on approaching their work.
The panel was moderated by Mary Margaret Jones (1998 Fellow, Chair of the Board of Trustees, and President/Senior Principal at Hargreaves Associates) and included:
- Craig Dykers: 2015 Resident, Partner at architectural design firm Snohetta
- Walter Hood: 1997 Fellow and 2014 Resident, AAR Trustee, Principal of Hood Design, and Professor of landscape architecture at UC Berkeley
- Catherine Wagner: 2014 Fellow, visual artist, and professor at Mills College
- Corey Keller: curator of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, who stepped in for Sandra Phillips (2000 Resident and senior curator of photography at SFMOMA)
In his introduction of the program, Mark Robbins, 1997 Fellow and AAR President, noted this was the seventh of the US series, and the first outside New York City. He described how the series provided opportunity for great collaborations between the Academy and other cultural and academic institutions, and thanked the evening’s host, ODC Artistic Director Brenda Way, herself a 2009 Resident.
Launched in 2015, the Conversations | Conversazioni series builds upon the robust programming in Rome to present the most compelling ideas in the arts and humanities by way of lectures, presentations and performances—on both sides of the Atlantic—at a variety of venues in New York and Rome, and throughout the US.