The speakers will be addressing the question of architectural influence on Mark Rothko’s oeuvre with a specific attention towards holistic spaces and not restricting  to those mentioned in the artist’s  writings. What is the relationship between architecture and art that is part of that architecture – most immediately frescos, but also all the ratios and proportions in a great building; a question that occupied MR endlessly in his own mural series.  And what is the relationship between art and history, as a building, often more than the art is contains, transcends epochs and communicates through the ages.

Francesco Stocchi (Rome, 1975) is the artistic director of Maxxi in Rome. From 2010 he has been Senior curator of Modern and Contemporary art at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. He is director of Il Foglio Arte, the art supplement of the newspaper Il Foglio, he has published numerous catalogues and artist monographs, teaches sporadically, writes and lectures regularly on art and visual culture.

Christopher Rothko, the second of Mark and Mary Alice Rothko’s two children, is a psychologist, writer and for the last thirty years, the custodian of the Rothko legacy in partnership with his sister, Kate. He is editor of his father’s book of philosophical writings, The Artist’s Reality. His own book of essays, Mark Rothko from the Inside Out, was published in 2015 by Yale University Press. Dr. Rothko has helped prepare more than two dozen Rothko exhibitions around the globe and was co-curator of the monumental 2023 Rothko retrospective at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. He is Past Chair of the Rothko Chapel Board and currently head of the Opening Spaces Campaign.

It will be possible to attend both in person and online, by registering at the link at the top of this page.