Martino Stierli will discuss Robert Venturi’s two-year stay at the American Academy in Rome 1954 to 1956 and how this experience decisively shaped his architectural thinking. Stierli will talk about Venturi’s interest in (then) contemporary Italian architecture as shown in his book Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture of 1966. The landmark work was published by the Museum of Modern Art, where Mr. Stierli is currently the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design.