Courtesy of the artist and Petzel, New York.
Join artist, musician, and composer Stephen Prina for a conversation with chair and curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Paulina Pobocha, about the lasting influence of architect Bruce Goff on his work. Their conversation will be followed by a special screening of Prina’s film THE WAY HE ALWAYS WANTED IT II.
THE WAY HE ALWAYS WANTED IT II (2008) is a 35mm film shot at the Ruth and Sam Ford House, a Bruce Goff-designed home in Aurora, Illinois, with a musical score derived from fragments of music written by Goff before he abandoned music composition at the age of 30.
This program is made possible by the Frank J. Mooney Memorial Fund.
Drawings of the Ruth and Sam Ford House, Aurora, Illinois
Drawn and designed by Bruce Goff
about the speakers
Stephen Prina is an artist, musician, and composer, born in 1954 in Galesburg, Illinois and based in Los Angeles, California. He is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies (VES) at Harvard University. He received his B.F.A. from Northern Illinois University and M.F.A. from California Institute of the Arts.
Prina’s work has been exhibited worldwide. Recent solo exhibitions include Stephen Prina: A Lick and a Promise, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2025); English for Foreigners, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2020); galesburg, illinois+, Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles; Stephen Prina, Museo Madre, Naples, Italy (2017) ¡HOLA! ¿QUÉ TAL?, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne (2014); and Gaylen Gerber with Stephen Prina, The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago (2002); among others.
His work can be seen in public collections at the Tate, London; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum Boijmans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum Ludwig, Cologne, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, and elsewhere.
Paulina Pobocha is the Art Institute’s chair and curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. She joined the museum in 2024 from the Hammer Museum, where she served as Robert Soros Senior Curator and helped shape the museum’s contemporary collections and exhibitions program. While at the Hammer, she collaborated with the Art Institute team on Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective, which opened at the Hammer in October 2024. Her recent projects include a collaboration with Essence Harden on the 2025 edition of the Hammer’s Made in L.A. biennial and a major survey of German artist Thomas Schütte, which opened at MoMA in September 2024.
Before joining the Hammer Museum, Pobocha spent 15 years in the department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, where she contributed to the conception and display of MoMA’s modern and contemporary collection galleries.
Pobocha received her BA in art history from Johns Hopkins University and her MPhil in art history from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. She lectures widely, has served as a critic at the Yale University School of Art, and is a frequent contributor to Texte zur Kunst.
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Closed captioning will be available for this program. For questions related to accessibility accommodations, please email [email protected].
