On Saturday, October 24, the Museum of Contemporary Art Connecticut (MoCA\CT) hosted a CORA Foundation Community Conversation exploring walls, division, and the power of architecture to bring people together.
Centered on Rick Shaefer’s monumental charcoal drawings in Colossi, presented as part of Looking for History, the discussion was moderated by the museum’s executive director, Robin Jaffee Frank. Panelists included Shaefer; Rick Bell, an architect, professor, and acting director of Columbia University Center for Buildings, Infrastructure and Public Space (CBIPS) at Columbia University; and Peter H. Gistelinck, executive director of the Avon Theatre.
Following Jaffee Frank’s introduction, Robin Tauck, founder and president of CORA Foundation and owner of Tauck Inc., praised Shaefer’s work for its resonance with national and international geopolitical tensions.
“Why do you need a wall in the middle of the desert?” Jaffee Frank asked Shaefer to kick off the event, referring to his monumental charcoal drawing, The New Colossus.
Shaefer said he began the series in 2016 amid the border-wall debate, drawing on a history of separation stretching back 13,000 years. “The minute we started as a species putting down any kind of roots, one of the first structures we built was a wall,” he said. “Now, there is a certain urgency to the discussion.”
Bell traced the impulse to build barriers from the Dutch wall that gave Wall Street its name to contemporary observation towers. “The desire to build walls is as inbred as the desire for food or sex,” he said. Whether a building endures, he added, is “not just a question of lifespan. It’s a question of purpose.”
The panel also considered architecture’s aspirations and vulnerabilities, including the World Trade Center’s founding ideal of fostering peace through international trade and the threats facing cultural landmarks.
“I worked for years with UNESCO on World Heritage architecture,” Tauck said during the Q+A portion. “The number-one risk right now to these sites, more than a thousand of them, with some fifty listed as in danger, is war and looting,” as well as growing threats from climate change and wildfires.
Gistelinck connected these themes to the Avon Theatre’s restoration and expansion, and the changing ways people access culture. “Because culture has changed, access has changed, and it’s built a wall,” he said, emphasizing the theatre’s mission “to create a platform for community building through culture.” Bell agreed that buildings can indeed bring people together.
Rick Shaefer’s Colossi and Michael Borders’ Connecticut Industry, presented as part of Looking for History, remain on view through November 15 at MoCA\CT, 19 Newtown Turnpike, Westport. The conversation was free to attend through support from the CORA Foundation.
Photo: Peter H. Gistelinck, executive director of the Avon Theatre; Robin Tauck, president and founder of the CORA Foundation and owner of Tauck Inc.; artist Rick Shaefer; MoCA\CT executive director, Robin Jaffee Frank; and Rick Bell, an architect, professor, and acting director of Columbia University Center for Buildings, Infrastructure and Public Space (CBIPS), standing in front of Shaefer’s The New Colossus. Other photos: Scenes from the panel discussion and the crowd. Photo by Kylie Odell
