The Museum Café is closed for extraordinary maintenance until February 19, 2026.
Organized by Sharon Hecker
In this four-part lecture series, Sharon Hecker traces connections between Lucio Fontana’s ceramic work and broader developments in contemporary clay practice.
Starting with works by the Italo-Argentinian artist, participants will step behind the scenes of curatorial practice and exhibition design, discovering how the interplay of light, space, and sculpture creates an intimate relationship between viewer and artwork.
Clay in turn becomes a body: it retains gestures, prints, and movements, serving many artists as a means of representing identity, memory, and healing. From the traces left by Fontana to contemporary investigations, matter bridges personal experiences and artistic research.
The series examines clay as “self” and “other,” illuminating how the female figures of Fontana and several contemporary artists express diverse relationships between artist and medium. The series culminates with the vibrant ceramic installations that Fontana created for the Cinema Arlecchino in Milan, where art, craftsmanship, color, and architecture intertwine in a striking and innovative vision.
The four lectures offer a unique opportunity to explore and examine Fontana and his artistic journey, which culminated in the renowned slashes, but whose roots were firmly established in the expressive and relational power of clay.
A journey behind the scenes of the exhibition that explores how curatorial choices, space, and sculpture intertwine to create intimate and contemplative encounters with Lucio Fontana’s ceramics
An exploration of the deep connection between body and clay, from the physical traces left by Lucio Fontana to contemporary practices transforming gesture, identity, and memory in forms of vulnerability, expression, and healing.
An exploration of how clay becomes an expression of “self” and a live interlocutor able to dialogue, answer, and stimulate reciprocal creativity between artist and matter.
The lecture explores how Fontana's vibrant ceramic commissions for the Cinema Arlecchino anticipated his later revolutions, showcasing clay as a living, dynamic medium capable of uniting art, architecture, and the public.
Sharon Hecker, Ph.D., is an art historian and curator specializing in Italian modern and contemporary art. She curated Manu-Facture: The Ceramics of Lucio Fontana, on view at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. A leading authority on Medardo Rosso, she has published more than thirty works on the artist and has organized exhibitions at institutions such as the Pulitzer Arts Foundation; the Harvard Art Museums, and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac. She has also written extensively on Luciano Fabro, Lucio Fontana, Francesco Lo Savio, Marisa Merz, and Giuseppe Penone. Her publications include A Moment’s Monument: Medardo Rosso and the International Origins of Modern Sculpture (2017); Postwar Italian Art History Today: Untying “The Knot” (co-edited with Marin R. Sullivan) (2018); Curating Fascism: Exhibitions and Memory from the Fall of Mussolini to Today (co-edited with Raffaele Bedarida) (2022); Female Cultural Production in Modern Italy: Literature, Art, and Intellectual History (co-edited with Catherine Ramsey-Portolano) (2023); Apollo and Daphne: Luciano Fabro and the Feminine (2024); and Art and Intimacy in Modern Italy: Entangled Lives (co-edited with Teresa Kittler) (2025). She has received fellowships from the Mellon, Fulbright, and Getty Foundations and serves as Series Editor of the Visual Cultures and Italian Contexts Series for Bloomsbury Publishing.