Join us for a conversation exploring Renaissance dance in conjunction with the Botticelli Drawings exhibition and the San Francisco Ballet’s upcoming presentation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This conversation will feature Tamara Rojo, artistic director of the San Francisco Ballet, and Furio Rinaldi, exhibition curator and curator of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, moderated by Sarah Mackay, assistant curator of prints, drawings, and photographs.

Watch the livestream

About the speakers

Tamara Rojo is a celebrated leader and award-winning principal dancer who was appointed artistic director of San Francisco Ballet in January 2022. Prior to this, she served as artistic director and lead principal of London’s English National Ballet for nine and a half years, where she implemented groundbreaking programming, garnered the company accolades, and spearheaded a successful £50-million capital campaign to create a new headquarters for the company. Prior to her directorship, she was a principal dancer at the Royal Ballet for over a decade where she held lead roles in all ballet classics, as well as works by Balanchine, Robbins, MacMillan, and more. She has received Spain’s three highest honors: the Gold Medal of Fine Arts (2002), Prince of Asturias Arts Award (2005), Encomienda de Numero Queen Isabel La Católica (2011); the Kennedy Center Gold Medal for Fine Arts (2012); the Order of the British Empire (2016); and two Olivier Awards, one for Best New Dance Production (2010), and one for Best Achievement in Dance (2017).

Furio Rinaldi is curator of drawings and prints at the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, the Fine Arts Museums’ department of works on paper. An expert on 15th- and 16th-century Italian drawings, particularly the schools of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo, he has published extensively on the subject in The Burlington Magazine, Master Drawings, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art Journal. At the Museums, he organized the Legion of Honor exhibition Color into Line: Pastel from the Renaissance to the Present (2021–2022). His curatorial experience includes positions in the department of drawings and prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, where he also served as a Samuel H. Kress Fellow, and the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan. Rinaldi holds a PhD in art history from the University of Rome and an MA and BA in art history from the University of Milan.

Sarah Mackay is assistant curator of prints, drawings, and photographs for the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts at the Fine Arts Museums San Francisco. Since joining FAMSF in 2022, Sarah has contributed to exhibitions including Paperworks, Printworks, Drawing the Line, Robert Bechtle: Prints and Drawings, and served as presenting curator for Ansel Adams in Our Time. Before joining the Museums, Sarah was with Christie’s, New York, where she worked in multiple specialist departments spanning fine arts and luxury.

Ticket info

Free program, also available via livestream. Seating is limited and unassigned. Tickets are distributed in front of the Gunn Theater an hour before the program starts. This does not include admission to the exhibition. 

Contact info

Public Programs
publicprograms@famsf.org
415.750.7694