Rosa Lowinger on a Life in Conservation

CCAHA is excited to partner with the Penn Museum to present conservator and memoirist Rosa Lowinger in conversation with Penn Museum Head Conservator Molly Gleeson. The two will discuss Lowinger’s recent memoir, Dwell Time. Part love letter to her time at Penn and in Philadelphia, Dwell Time is an illuminating debut memoir by one of the few prominent Latinas in the field of art and architectural conservation. It’s also a moving portrait of a Cuban Jewish family’s intergenerational trauma and a story about repair and healing that will forever change how you see the objects and places we cherish, and how we manage damage and loss. 

Admission is $10 for the public and free for Friends of CCAHA, our new giving society with benefits including special online and in-person programming.

About the Speakers

Rosa Lowinger is a Cuban-born American writer and art conservator. She writes regularly for popular and academic media about conservation, historic preservation, the visual arts, and Cuba. The founder and current Principal Conservator of RLA Conservation, LLC, one of the U.S.’s largest woman-owned art and architectural conservation firms, she previously published Tropicana Nights: The Life and Times of the Legendary Cuban Nightclub (Harcourt, 2005) and Promising Paradise: Cuban Allure American Seduction (Wolfsonian Museum, 2016).

Molly Gleeson, the Head Conservator at the Penn Museum, has a great passion for public outreach, community engagement, and connecting people with cultural heritage. With more than 20 years of experience in the field, she has worked in museums and archaeological sites in the United States, Chile, Easter Island, and Egypt. She has a B.A. in Art Conservation from the University of Delaware and an M.A. from the UCLA/Getty Program. Her current doctoral work explores the therapeutic potential of art conservation for people experiencing serious health issues or significant loss, with a specific focus on disaster- impacted communities.