“Tallinn Architecture Biennial” (photo: Tonu Tunnel))
Lola Ben-Alon: Coral Courts Lecture
Lola Ben-Alon will deliver the Coral Courts Lecture as part of the Sam Fox School’s Public Lecture Series at WashU.
About Lola Ben-Alon
Lola Ben-Alon is a material designer, engineer, and curator. She is an assistant professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, where she directs the natural materials lab and the building technology curriculum. She specializes in earthen building materials, their life cycles, supply chains, fabrication techniques, and policy. Ben-Alon earned her doctorate at Carnegie Mellon University and holds a Bachelor of Science in Structural Engineering and Master of Science in Construction Management from the Technion Institute of Technology. Her design work has been exhibited globally including at the Venice Biennial, Indian Ceramics Triennial, Tallinn Architecture Biennale, Craft Contemporary Museum in Los Angeles, the Center for Mediterranean Architecture in Greece, 1014 Space for Ideas in New York, and Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Her scholarly work has been published in peer-reviewed academic journals such as Construction and Building Materials, Building and Environment, the Journal of Green Building, and Automation in Construction, as well as featured in design magazines such as Metropolis, The Architect’s Newspaper, and Dezeen. In 2024, Ben-Alon received the Architectural League of New York Prize. She is a recipient of multiple grants, including the National Science Foundation’s Future Manufacturing grant and the U.S. Innovation Corps grant. Ben-Alon serves on the board of ACSA’s Technology | Architecture + Design, and Elsevier’s Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.
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.