The Graham Foundation is pleased to welcome architect and designer Emilio Ambasz, curator of MoMA’s groundbreaking 1972 exhibition Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, and Mark Wasiuta, co-curator of the Graham’s current exhibition Environments and Counter-Environments, for a talk on October 31, 2013. Following an introduction by Mark Wasiuta, Emilio Ambasz will read two texts that critically reflect on the historic 1972 exhibition.

Emilio Ambasz is an Argentinean architect and designer. He received his Bachelor and Master of Architecture degrees from Princeton University. From 1969 to 1976, Ambasz was Curator of Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where he developed numerous influential exhibitions on architecture and design. Ambasz’s architectural projects, which explore the poetic potential and public value of natural landscapes, include the San Antonio Botanical Conservatory (1988), the ACROS Fukuoka Prefectural International Hall (1994), and the Banca dell’Occhio in Mestre-Venice, Italy (2009).

Mark Wasiuta teaches at the Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation, Columbia University where he is the Director of Exhibitions and Co-Director of the Masters of Science in Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture (CCCP). He studied at the University of British Columbia, Princeton University, and Harvard University. His research focuses on postwar environmental design, an area of shared interest at the base of his collaborative office, the International House of Architecture.  He is the recipient of recent grants from the Graham Foundation, the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the Banff New Media Institute. Recent curated and designed exhibitions include, Tony Oursler, UFOs and Effigies, No Longer Art: Salvage Art Institute, Collecting Architecture Territories, and Operators’ Exercises: Open Form in Film and Architecture. He is co-editor and co-author of Dan Graham’s New Jersey, and has recent articles published in Domus, Art Lies, Praxis, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, and Explorations.

For more information on the exhibition, Environments and Counter Environments. “Italy The New Domestic Landscape,” MoMA, 1972, click here.

Image: Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, 1972. Photograph by Cristiano Toraldo di Francia, courtesy of Emilio Ambasz.