Materia Urbis exhibition (photo by MA student Emma Weiss)
A group of students in JCU’s MA in Art History program had the opportunity to curate the exhibition Materia Urbis: Dialogues in Roman Artisanship, as part of Professor Cornelia Lauf’s AH 672 Fabricating Rome class. The exhibition, which took place on November 22 and 23, reconsidereds Rome as an evolving site of material experimentation, loss, and reinvention, turning attention to the artisanal craftsmanship that shapes the city’s cultural and aesthetic landscape.
This exhibition researched the significance of artisans who endure time and asked how we might understand artistic legacy. In focusing on works in progress, fragmented forms, and speculative reconstructions, the exhibit emphasized the generative potential of loss. It also reflected on how the act of making remains deeply embedded in the Roman community, and how the processes behind creation are as revealing as the finished artifacts produced.
Photo by Emma Weiss
Featuring makers and their processes through a curated exhibit calls attention to the value of what the artisans have to offer, and what is often overlooked: the touch of an individual, the imperfection of hand, and the continuity of tradition. To inhabit spaces, to see, hear, and feel the work of the dedicated craftsman, is to encounter a form of meaning that cannot be reproduced by mechanized production. In doing so, the exhibition invited visitors to reconsider what it means to create, sustain, and remember the human behind the product.
This exhibition was made possible thanks to the generous support of the Rome-based architectural firm Schiattarella Architetti Associati and John Cabot University. The partnership affirms the continued relevance of interrogating the past not for answers, but for questions about how we preserve, how we forget, and how we continue to fabricate meaning in the present.
Curatorial Team: Fiona Dolan, Max Fusi, Manuela Micucci, Arianna Morrico, Aleksandra Nasobina, Grace Pietruszka, Bhoomi Rana, Joseph Shingelo, V. M. Williams
Acknowledgements: Amedeo Schiattarella, Giulia Ponzi, Marta Francocci; Oreficeria Volpotti, LabCostume, MomentuM Glass, FLUXIS Contemporary Forms, Antica Stamperia Trevi, Bordi Belle Arti, Giuncart, Fornace Bernasconi; James Gardner and the Department of Art and Design; Lila Yawn, Director, MA Program, and Inge Hansen, Department of Art History at John Cabot University.
