Iwan Baan: Rome – Las Vegas: Bread and Circuses
In 2022, the American Academy in Rome organized From Las Vegas to Rome, an exhibition that revisited the relationship between Rome and Las Vegas through seventy photographs by Iwan Baan. Both cities carry heavily constructed images, and with them, polar assumptions: Las Vegas is surreal, thin, dishonest, new; Rome is authentic, thick, honest, ancient. The exhibition took a transnational look at resonances in architecture, urbanism and the social uses of space between two legendary cities on opposite sides of the Atlantic.