Join us for a conversation with artists Rashid Johnson and Sarah Sze and architect Peter Marino, moderated by Eric Motley, deputy director of the National Gallery. Museums serve as a collaborative space where artists, architects, and the public come together to create a dynamic exchange. An architect designs the space, artists bring it to life with their work, and the people within give it purpose and meaning as a place for gathering and inspiration.  

This program is coordinated with the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies (FAPE) and generously sponsored by Agnes Gund in honor of Sharon Percy Rockefeller.  

About the Presenters

Rashid Johnson creates work that explores themes of art history, individual and shared cultural identities, personal narratives, literature, philosophy, materiality, and critical history.  Johnson works with a wide range of media including sculpture, painting, drawing, film making, and installation. His complex multidisciplinary practice incorporates varied materials rich with symbolism and personal history. His work is known for its narrative embedding of a pointed range of everyday materials and objects.  Many of his more recent works delve into existential themes such as personal and collective anxiety, interiority, and liminal space. Johnson holds a BA in photography from Columbia College in Chicago and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Peter Marino is the principal of the New York-based architectural practice Peter Marino Architect. Marino works globally across a broad range of project types and scales. He is widely credited for redefining modern luxury through equal emphasis on architecture and interior design. His honors include 22 citations for architectural design excellence from the American Institute of Architects, the Hirshhorn Museum’s Leader in the Arts Award (2024), and a Hadrian Award from World Monuments Fund (2024) for his commitment to architectural and art restoration in Venice. He was also named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2012) and an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2017) by the French Ministry of Culture. In 2021, Marino opened the Peter Marino Art Foundation in Southampton, New York, to exhibit over 200 works from his collection. Marino holds a degree in architecture from Cornell University and began his career at Skidmore Owings & Merrill, George Nelson and I.M. Pei/Cossutta & Ponte.

Sarah Sze gleans objects and images from both physical and digital worlds and assembles them into complex multimedia works. Her work shifts the scale between microscopic observation and macroscopic perspective on the infinite. Sze’s dynamic, generative body of work spans sculpture, painting, drawing, printmaking, video, and installation while always addressing the precarious nature of materiality and grappling with matters of entropy and temporality. Sze holds a BA from Yale University and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York. Her work was included in the 48th Venice Biennale and the Carnegie International (1999), the Whitney Biennial (2000), and the Bienal de São Paulo (2002). She was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2003.