Catie Newell, “Secret Sky”, The massive reworking of an ailing barn to reconfigure its relationship to the landscape and sky offering a new form of occupation for both humans and light. (image courtesy Newell)
Catie Newell: Fitzgibbon Charrette Kickoff Lecture
Catie Newell will deliver the Fitzgibbon Charrette Kickoff Lecture as part of the Sam Fox School’s Public Lecture Series at WashU.
About Catie Newell
Catie Newell captures light and darkness in material and optical assemblies that amplify our connection to a living and spinning earth. As the founding principal of the architecture, art, and research practice Alibi Studio and professor of architecture at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College, Newell’s research and creative practice has been widely recognized for exploring heartfelt design construction and materiality in relationship to location and geography. The work ranges in scale from buildings to products and explores the world most deeply with material systems and optical captures. Alibi Studio deploys material explorations, illumination and darkness, and novel modes of occupation, all created through rigorous prototyping and custom fabrication tools. The process of fabrication is a vital act in the work, often amplifying material effects and situational influences, intertwining the processes of making and design across the entire project. Her work has been shown in secret venues in Detroit, in the Arsenale of the Venice Biennale, in night-sensitive museum solo shows, and in the landscape of rural Michigan. Newell is a Lucas Fellow, a Kresge Artist Fellow, a WOJR/Civitella Fellow, and a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome.
More Upcoming Lectures
Nov 11 at 5:30pm • Kemper Art Museum
Roots and Rhizomes: Relational Networks in the Art of Carolina Caycedo
In 2022, Carolina Caycedo stewarded the planting of an indigenous shadbush tree in a community garden in New York City’s East Harlem (El Barrio). This living organism, whose metaphorical seeds grew from Caycedo’s ongoing “Genealogy of Struggle” series, inspires Susanna V. Temkin’s exploration of the artist’s work within larger relational networks. Expanding ecological and symbolic concepts associated with roots, seeds, and branches, Temkin considers connections within Caycedo’s practice and across broader art histories of the Americas. In particular, Temkin will address connections to other artists in Caycedo’s work, along with broader histories of protest, ecofeminism, solidarity, and resistance.
This talk is presented in conjunction with the exhibition “Carolina Caycedo: Growing Deep Roots”, as well as the forthcoming presentation of Confluencias at El Museo del Barrio, New York (originated at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo).
About the Speaker
Susanna V. Temkin is an art historian and the interim chief curator at El Museo del Barrio, where she has worked since 2018. Temkin earned her master’s and doctoral degrees from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, where her research focused on modern art in the Americas, with a concentration on Cuba. At El Museo, her curatorial credits include the museum’s fiftieth anniversary exhibition, "Culture and the People" (2019), “La Trienal” (2020, 2024, and forthcoming 2027 edition), and the recent monograph of photographer Sophie Rivera (2026), among others. Prior to El Museo, she served as assistant curator at Americas Society in New York, as well as the research and archive specialist at the Cecilia de Torres Ltd., where she assisted in co-authoring the digital catalogue raisonné of artist Joaquín Torres-García. Temkin contributed essays to several exhibition catalogues and publications and is currently serving on the editorial board of the Journal of Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture.