From AAR Resident Jessica Helfand, Portraits of the Fellows’ Class of 2010

Jessica Helfand, self-portrait. Gouache on paper. 4.5 x 2.4 inches

Since the Ides of March, Jessica Helfand and William Drenttel have been Henry Wolf Residents in Graphic Design at the American Academy in Rome. But it was just a few short weeks ago that Helfand—an author, columnist and lecturer on graphic design—took on the enormous task of commemorating in gouache on paper the entire AAR Fellows class of  2010, as well as more than a few members of the staff. Jessica finished the portraits—based on iPhone photos taken by her daughter Fiona—just in time for the Friday 28 May rosette ceremony, in which the Fellows formally receive the designation “FAAR”.

In a recent article published by Felt and Wire, Jessica Helfand discusses her thoughts on these portraits, plus a series of more abstract line studies that she simultaneously executed. Ironically, Jessica will miss the Academy graduation: just before the Rome ceremony Jessica, Bill, Fiona and her brother Malcolm fly to Spain, the last stop of the family’s year-long 29,000 trek around the world.

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Founding the American Academy in Rome, 1894-1897

Interior courtyard of the Palazzo Torlonia, home of the American School of Architecture in Rome from November 1894 to July 1895. Photo: Nancy Austin

Visiting Scholar Nancy Austin spent February 2010 at the AAR researching the material traces of the original  Academy during its first twenty years, from 1894-1914. Her focus has been on the physical situation of the AAR before its 1911 merger with the American School of Classical Studies in Rome, and the 1914 establishment of a new home on the Gianicolo for the united institutions. In an earlier article on this blog, Austin discussed the role of the Villa Aurora in the life of the Academy from 1895-1907. Here is Nancy Austin’s second posting on the earliest history of the Academy…

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In Rome, ‘Portraits’ Exhibition of Photographer Alec Soth Opens at the AAR 21 May

Photographer Alec Soth

The American Academy in Rome and Gagosian Gallery are pleased to present Alec Soth: Portraits, a selected exhibition of photographs spanning the last twelve years. The show in the AAR Gallery opens on Friday 21 May (6.00-9.00 PM), and runs to Saturday 3 July 2010.

In the unique portraits of American subjects here presented, Soth echoes the humanist tradition established by the great chroniclers of the American experience such as Walker Evans, Robert Frank, and Stephen Shore.

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In Rome, Academy Fellows Visit, Contrast the Two St. Pauls

At St. Paul’s Within the Walls, Bill Franklin (left) and Richard Wittman

On the morning of Friday 14 May a group of Academy Fellows visited the two most important Roman churches of the 19th century: Saint Paul’s Within the Walls, the American Episcopal Church in Rome (1873-1876), and the Basilica of San Paolo fuori le Mura (1825-1929, with a medieval cloister), an early Christian church reconstructed after a fire in 1823.

Guiding the first part of the tour—within the walls—was the Rev. Dr. R. William Franklin, Associate Director of External Affairs at the American Academy. Leading the group “fuori le mura” was current AAR Fellow Richard Wittman, an associate professor of History of Art and Architecture at University of California Santa Barbara, who is the 2009/10 recipient of the Millicent Mercer Johnsen Post-Doctoral Rome Prize in Modern Italian Studies. Richard’s project at the Academy has been focused on the 19th century reconstruction of San Paolo, described in detail here.

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For the Friends of the Library, Old and New Light on Rome’s Rione Testaccio

Satellite view of Rome’s Monte Testaccio. Image: Google Earth

The Friends of the Library was founded 1961 by Library readers at the American Academy in Rome so that they could help build the Library’s collections with their annual dues and special initiatives. For nearly half a century, the Friends of the Library (=FOL) has provided important financial support for acquisitions, and in thanks to the FOL the Library has organized regular programs  for the group presenting the work of scholars.

Featured on Thursday 29 April, for the 2010 Patricia Labalme Friends of the Library Lecture, was dott. Renato Sebastiani, archaeologist with the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma. Sebastiani delivered a lecture on “Testaccio: Archeologia del Paessagio du un Rione di Roma”, which treated recent excavations in the area of the future Nuovo Mercato of Testaccio. He then followed his lecture the next morning with a guided tour of the Testaccio area for the Friends.  You can see the full description of the events here.

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At the AAR, Revisiting the Roman Colony of Cosa, Plus De St Phalle’s ‘Tarot Garden’

The Capitolium at Cosa

The sky from time to time looked threatening, but on Monday 10 May an Academy group managed to enjoy a mercifully dry hike among the ruins of the Roman colony of Cosa (near modern Ansedonia in southern Tuscany). The day continued with an afternoon visit to Garavicchio (not quite 10 km from Cosa) to explore the ‘Giardino dei Tarocchi’ of the French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle.

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At the AAR from 13 May 10, an Exhibition on Destroy All Monsters, Experimental Rock Pioneers

Cary Loren and Niagara of Destroy All Monsters

From 13 May to 10 June 2010, the American Academy in Rome, in collaboration with the DEPART Foundation and NERO, will present Hungry for Death, an exhibition of ephemera culled from the archive of Destroy All Monsters (DAM). DAM was an influential Michigan artist collective/band of the 70s and early 80s that included two prominent representatives of the contemporary US art scene—Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw—as well as Niagara, Cary Loren, then (in a later incarnation) also Ron Asheton, Michael Davis and others. For a DAM discography see here.

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At the AAR’s Villa Aurelia 4-6 May, Three Concerts by the Scharoun Ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic

What a week. On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday 4-6 May, the Academy’s Villa Aurelia will see three concerts performed by the Scharoun Ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic. The concerts—each starting at 9 PM—will feature music by Fellows in Musical Composition at both the American Academy in Rome and the American Academy in Berlin: Lisa Bielawa (Frederic A. Juilliard/Walter Damrosch Rome Prize Fellow at the AAR [4 May]), Don Byron (Samuel Barber Rome Prize Fellow at the AAR [5 May]), and Andrew Norman FAAR’07 (Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin [6 May]). Also on the week’s programs are compositions by George Crumb, Erwin Schulhoff, Guillaume Dufay, Sofia Gubaidulina, and chamber works of Brahms, Schubert, and Mozart. For a complete program of the three concerts, and composer biographies, see here.

The Scharoun Ensemble Berlin was founded in 1983 by members of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in honor of the architect Hans Scharoun (1893–1972), who designed the Berlin Philharmonie. The ensemble, which comprises the standard octet instrumentation, is one of Germany’s most distinguished chamber music ensembles. Two concert bonuses are in store from the current Rome Prize Fellows: Lisa Bielawa is soprano soloist in her composition, Hurry, while Don Byron will perform along with members of the Scharoun Ensemble in Brahms’ Serenade no. 1.

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AAR April Walks and Talks 4: Hadrian’s Villa near Tivoli, Plus the Hillside Town of Ciciliano

Looking toward Tivoli, from the hillside town of Ciciliano

The great villa constructed by the Emperor Hadrian near Tivoli between AD 118 and the late 130s is one of the most original monuments from Greco-Roman antiquity, and indeed in the history of architecture and art. Its emotional power and instructive potential have remained undiminished since its rediscovery in the Renaissance. Set among terraces of olive trees on a vast, uneven tract below Tivoli, the Villa’s remains are spread across an area twice that of Pompeii, with new major finds still emerging. For more than five centuries a long series of architects, artists, and antiquarians have come to draw and study the ruins of Hadrian’s extraordinary retreat, observe the animating role of water in its design, and appreciate its engagement with the landscape.

Among the latest in that series of visitors was an American Academy in Rome group that explored on 24 April a selection of the Villa’s pavilions, several of which count among the most innovative and sophisticated examples of Roman architectural design. Leading the group was Academy Trustee John Pinto (FAAR’75, RAAR’06), currently also a Visiting Scholar at the Academy. Pinto is Howard Crosby Butler Memorial Professor of the History of Architecture at Princeton University, and author—among many other publications—of a major work on the Villa Adriana with William L. MacDonald FAAR’56. That book is Villa Adriana. La costruzione e il mito da Adriano a Louis Kahn, published by Electa (most recent edition 2006), which has its origin in their Hadrian’s Villa and its Legacy (Yale University Press 1995).

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At the American Academy 30 Sep-2 Oct 2010, a Conference on the 1960 Rome Olympics

Rome 1960: Greco-Roman wrestling in the Basilica of Maxentius. Credit: George Silk, LIFE/Google

A multi-disciplinary conference hosted by the American Academy in Rome from 30 September-2 October 2010 will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1960 Rome Summer Olympics. The conference focuses on these Games as a cultural turning point, with a significance—for Italy, the United States, the Soviet Union, and many other  countries—that far transcends the actual sporting events, where the level of competition was unusually high. Collaborating with the AAR in this conference are the Centro Studi Americani and the British School at Rome. Organizing the conference is AAR Mellon Professor Corey Brennan. You can find the Facebook group for this event here.

Contributions are encouraged on a broad range of topics that touch upon the XVII Summer Olympics, going far beyond sports history to encompass fields such as cultural politics, urban planning, architectural history, and media studies. It is anticipated that there be twelve speakers in all, chosen by an American Academy committee in response to this international call for papers. The schedule will be designed to accommodate short film presentations and ample discussion, in addition to a site visit to various points in the city important to the history of the 1960 Games.

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AAR April Walks and Talks 3: Academy History in Rome’s “Protestant Cemetery” with Librarian Emerita Christina Huemer

“‘In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”, once wrote Benjamin Franklin. On the morning of Thursday 15 April, having already submitted tax returns to the US Internal Revenue Service, a group from the American Academy rounded out the equation by meditating on death. The venue could hardly be bettered—one of the most historic and heartachingly beautiful burial grounds in the world, Rome’s Cimitero acattolico. The Non-Catholic (or, popularly, “Protestant”) Cemetery is located near Porta San Paolo alongside the Augustan-era Pyramid of Cestius and a section of the Aurelian Wall. Buried there are Keats, Shelley, Antonio Gramsci, and literally hundreds of other notables. A full database to the Cemetery can be found here.

Leading the group that morning was Christina Huemer, Drue Heinz Librarian Emerita of the AAR, who developed an expert’s knowledge of the site in her decade and a half (1992-2007) at the Academy. On the walk Chris Huemer took care to point out the numerous individuals with a connection to the American Academy in Rome buried in the Cemetery—some of whom already had come to life in Huemer’s memorable 2005 exhibition “Spellbound by Rome”, that treated the city’s Anglo-American community in the years 1890-1914. One member of Huemer’s tour was Jessica Helfand, who with her husband William Drenttel are current Henry Wolf Residents in Graphic Design at the AAR. Helfand has since posted an eloquent illustrated general appreciation of the Cemetery that April morning on her award-winning blog, the Design Observer, that she co-edits with Drenntel. Below you can find glimpses of thirteen memorials to the most important figures specifically in the history of the American Academy, all now reunited in the Non-Catholic Cemetery.

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AAR April Walks and Talks 2: Rome’s Foro Italico

1930s-era electrical power controls from the Piscina Coperta, Foro Italico

On Wednesday 14 April Academy Fellows and Visiting Artists and Scholars explored the monumental area of Rome’s Foro Italico, originally planned (starting in 1927) and executed as Foro Mussolini by the architect Enrico Del Debbio, with important contributions by Constantino Constantini and (especially) the crucial figure of Luigi Moretti. The visit was a timely one, given that Moretti is soon to be the subject of a major exhibition in Rome to inaugurate the new MAXXI space.

Paolo Pedinelli, historian of the Comitato Olimpico Nazionale Italiano (CONI), accompanied the AAR group in its visit to some of the most significant aspects of the area, including the Obelisk, the Stadio Olimpico, the Piscina Coperta (with its ex-Palestra of Mussolini, designed by Moretti), the Stadio dei Marmi, and the ex-Accademia di Educazione Fisica (with the Salone d’Onore del CONI). The group then made its way to see the exterior of Moretti’s rapidly deteriorating masterpiece, the Casa delle Armi (= Fencing School), and Del Debbio’s wonderfully preserved Foresteria Sud (1931-1937),  now Rome’s last remaining youth hostel.

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AAR April Walks and Talks 1: Roman Aqueducts From the Inside, Plus Palestrina and Subiaco

An AAR group visits the Triangolo Barberini near Palestrina

In the course of two days (Saturday 10 and Tuesday 13 April) Academy Fellows, Residents, Visiting Artists and Scholars, and friends took a close look at three sites in Lazio: Palestrina (35 km east of Rome), the Roman aqueducts near Vicovaro (45 km northeast of the city) and Subiaco (still further east of Rome, in all 70 km).

Gianni Ponti, Archaeology Liaison to the Academy and a dean at Rome’s IES, kicked off the proceedings on 10 April with an exploration of the rock-cut aqueducts of the Aquae Marcia and Claudia near the ex-monastery of S. Cosimato at Vicovaro, founded by Saint Benedict and built on the banks of the Anio river gorge. The aqueducts there are stunningly well preserved, and the Academy group climbed into them to inspect different techniques used for building aqueducts directly into the bedrock. Also visible (given a little vertical effort) were several cells carved into the rock where Benedictine hermits retreated into prayer. Facilitating the visit was a team from the Roma Sotterranea group, under the direction of Michele Concas.

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In Rome, Visual Artist Abigail Child’s L’Impero Invertito Opens at the AAR 15 April

Joseph H. Hazen Rome Prize recipient Abigail Child

Opening at the American Academy in Rome on Thursday 15 April (6pm to 8pm, in the Cryptoporticus) is a multimedia installation “L’Impero Invertito” by Abigail Child, current AAR Fellow in the Visual Arts. Child, the recipient of the Joseph H. Hazen Rome Prize, is an internationally acclaimed film/video artist who has received many notable distinctions, including Guggenheim, Fulbright, and Radcliffe Fellowships. Abigail Child’s original montage pushes the envelope of sound-image relations, exploring gesture as language, and creating radical strategies to rewrite narrative. She is currently a Professor in Film / Animation at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA.

In the last decade, Abigail Child has expanded her vertical montage to multi-screen installation, exhibiting at The Walker Art Museum and Harvard University, among others. In Rome this year Child has been filming scenes from the life of Mary and Percy Shelley in the form of imaginary home movies, utilizing AAR Fellows as actors and the magnificent light and buildings of Rome as “sets” for a feature film whose working title is The Pursuit.

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AAR Resident Mary Gibson FAAR’03 Explores History of Rome’s Prisons after Italian Unification

Bell from Mantellate women’s prison, Rome, Museo Criminologico

“The attitude toward history of crime and women’s history—which are my two main fields of interest—has radically changed since I started my dissertation research in the 1970s on prostitution”, explains current Academy Resident Mary Gibson FAAR’03. “At that time there didn’t seem to be much understanding on the part of either archivists or colleagues in the contemporary field on why you would study groups without power.”

For more than three decades, Mary Gibson’s research has focused on the history of crime, criminology, women, and sexuality in modern Italy. Her groundbreaking publications include Prostitution and the State in Italy (1986, second edition 1999; Italian translation 1995) and Born to Crime: Cesare Lombroso and the Origins of Biological Criminology (2002; Italian translation 2004). She also has translated, with Nicole Hahn Rafter, the two major works of the Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909): Criminal Woman, the Prostitute and the Normal Woman (2004), and Criminal Man (2006). Mary Gibson is Professor of History at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in NYC, and also teaches in the History and the Criminal Justice Programs at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

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Gabii Project, AAR in the News for Lead “Burrito” Casket Study Effort

The mysterious Roman imperial “lead burrito” coffin. Photo: Gabii Project

You may have seen the headlines:  “Mysterious lead coffin found near Rome”. “Ancient lead sarcophagus contains Roman VIP”. “Lead ‘burrito’ sarcophagus near Rome may hold a gladiator or a Christian dignitary”. And perhaps most to the point, “What the hell is buried in this half-ton coffin?”

The news story in question has to do with an unusual Imperial Roman lead sarcophagus, excavated 11 miles east of Rome in summer 2009 by the Gabii Project. The Gabii Project for the past three years has been studying and (starting last year) excavating near Palestrina the ancient Latin city of Gabii, a city-state that was once very much a rival to Rome. The University of Michigan sponsors the Gabii Project, which is directed by Michigan’s Nicola Terrenato, with excavations receiving the patrocinio of the American Academy in Rome.From left, Jeffrey A. Becker and Nicola Terrenato. Photo: Gabii Project

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Ten Days in Sicily for AAR Fellows, with the American School of Classical Studies at Athens

From the Doric temple at Segesta

Mi po’ mustrari na carta unna mi trovu? Well, fortunately on the March 2010 American Academy trip to Sicily no one ever had to try that dialect phrase (“can you show me on the map where I am?”). And that despite the rigors of an ambitious ten-day trek to some of the most stimulating cities, towns and sites of both the western and eastern portions of the island. The weather was brilliant, the wildflowers were in full bloom, and the food rarely disappointed.

What gave massive added value was the fact that the AAR teamed up with the American School of Classical Studies at Athens for the expedition. American School Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Classical Studies Margaret M. Miles (FAAR’88, RAAR’00)—whose primary areas of expertise include ancient Sicily and South Italy—led the trip with AAR Mellon Professor Corey Brennan (FAAR’88). The combined Rome and Athens group numbered twenty-two in all, including Olga Palagia, Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Athens; AAR Resident Ann Vasaly (FAAR’83), Associate Professor of Classical Studies at Boston University, with her husband Richard A. Young; and six current Fellows of the AAR. In the great ASCSA tradition, all members of the group offered at least one on-site report.

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Tracing the AAR’s First Twenty Years (Part I): The Villa Aurora

Portrait view of entrance to Villa Aurora. Source: AAR Fototeca

Visiting Scholar Nancy Austin was at the AAR in February 2010 researching the material traces of the original American Academy in Rome during its first twenty years, from 1894-1914. Her focus was on the physical situation of the Academy before its 1911 merger with the American School of Classical Studies in Rome was fully realized by a move three years later to joint quarters on the Janiculum. Combining historic material from the Academy’s Photo Archive (Fototeca) and Library, contemporary photography, and Google and Bing satellite maps, this project will culminate in a virtual tour. Highlights of this work in progress will be posted here first, and feedback is encouraged. Here is Nancy’s posting as she prepared to return home to Rhode Island…

“For a dozen years, from 1895 to 1907, the American Academy in Rome rented the Villa Aurora from Principe Don Rodolfo Boncompagni-Ludovisi, the 7th Prince of Piombino. The location on Via Lombardia was considered ideal, especially because of the proximity to the Villa Medici and the French Academy.  Today, the Villa Aurora is a designated Italian national treasure and home to a rare ceiling painting by Caravaggio in the original alchemy workshop.  It is possible to arrange a group tour on Fridays.”

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On 10 March, AAR Hosts 7th “Lazio e Sabina” Archaeological Conference

On Wednesday 10 March the American Academy in Rome hosted the 7^th edition of the conference “Lazio e Sabina”. This is
 part of a major three day event presented by the Soprintendenza per i
 Beni Archeologici del Lazio at the École
 Française de Rome (Tuesday 9 March), the AAR, and the Istituto Olandese a Roma (Thursday 11 March).

 For a full program for the conference, see here. More than 120 members of the archaeological community heard each of the 23 papers in the marathon all-day event at the American Academy.

Presiding at the AAR for
 the morning session (Colli Albani e area Tuscolana) was Eugenio La Rocca (Università degli Studi di Roma “La Sapienza”), 
and for the afternoon (Area costiera e isole) Mario Torelli (Università degli Studi di Perugia).

 Of particular interest to members of the AAR was a presentation by Anna 
Gallone of the Gabii Project on current University of Michigan excavations at the 
site of Gabii (near Palestrina), directed by Michigan’s Nicola Terrenato, with the patrocinio of the American Academy. For a description of this important new dig (with
 video) see here.

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At the American Academy in Rome, Painter Stephen Westfall’s ‘Pavimentazione sul Muro’ Show Runs 12 March-23 April 2010

Stephen Westfall in his AAR studio

On Friday 12 March 2010 (6-8 PM) the American Academy in Rome will see the opening of a new solo show “Pavimentazione sul Muro” by noted geometric abstract painter Stephen Westfall. Westfall is currently the Jules Guerin/John Armstrong Chaloner Rome Prize Fellow in Visual Arts at the American Academy. He came to the Academy as Assistant Professor in the Visual Arts at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, and Painting Co-chair at the Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College. Westfall’s show will be on exhibit at the AAR through Friday 23 April.

Stephen Westfall has been exploring and reacting to the intricate designs of the medieval cosmatesque floors that decorate many Roman churches and which make extensive use of triangles of colored marble. He has also been deeply impressed by the muscular geometries of ancient Roman mosaics and Baroque marble floors, Modernist Italian graphic design, and the distinctive lines and grids of Rationalist architecture.

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At the AAR, Marking the Rome Sustainable Food Project’s 3rd Anniversary

Friday 26 February 2010 was indeed a day to celebrate—for it marked the third anniversary of the American Academy’s Rome Sustainable Food Project. The endeavor, under the direction of Executive Chef Mona Talbott, has thoroughly rethought the kitchen and dining experience of the American Academy in Rome. It seems the RSFP almost instantly achieved its aim to create a lively (and delicious) “collaborative dining program that nourishes scholarship and conviviality”. And perhaps most importantly, the Rome Sustainable Food Project properly can be viewed as “a replicable model for sustainable dining in an institution.”

In its three years the Rome Sustainable Food Project already has attracted a great deal of attention in print, ranging from The New York Times to countless individual blogs. For a description of the RSFP as it stood a year ago, see this weblog’s account here, or better yet, for current news, join the RSFP’s own Facebook group. For an elegantly written and richly detailed continuous appreciation of the dining experience at the Academy and elsewhere in Rome, it is hard to beat The Roving Locavore, the weblog of AAR Fellow Traveler Amy Campion. And above find the latest contribution to the tributes to the RSFP, a video podcast by AAR Arts and Humanities Intern Diana Mellon, photodocumenting a pizza bianca master class at Antico Forno Roscioli, a breadmaker for the Rome Sustainable Food Project.

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Architecture Firm KieranTimberlake Tops All-AAR Field in Design for New US London Embassy

KieranTimberlake US London embassy design, view from east. Rendering by Studio amd

The Philadelphia architectural firm KieranTimberlake—founded in 1984 by Stephen Kieran (FAAR’81), FAIA, and James Timberlake (FAAR’83), FAIA—has won a high-profile competition to design the new American embassy in London. Their proposal is for a secure and environmentally efficient glass cube, with its own water and energy sources, set atop a colonnade in a landscape on the south Thames embankment with a pond and pathways open to the public.

James Timberlake termed it “an urban building in an urban park.” The new embassy is scheduled to break ground in 2013 and be completed by 2017. You can view KieranTimberlake’s illustrated description of their winning design here. For this weblog’s January 2009 profile of KieranTimberlake, see here.

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For 2010 Jerome Lectures at AAR, Harvard Classicist Kathleen Coleman Recreates World of Roman Child Poet

2010 Jerome Lecturer Kathleen Coleman, Professor of Latin, Harvard University

Thomas Spencer Jerome (1864-1914) was a socially prominent American lawyer and afficionado of Roman history who lived on Capri from 1899 until his death. In his will he endowed a series of lectures to be jointly administered by the University of Michigan and the American Academy in Rome, and delivered at both institutions. The Jerome Lectures soon emerged as one of the most prestigious international venues for presenting important work in Roman history and culture, as well as on topics in historiography and the philosophy of history. The University of Michigan Press has long published the revised proceedings.

This year’s Jeromes are the 39^th in the series. They feature Kathleen Coleman, Professor of Latin in the Department of the Classics at Harvard University. Her topic is “Q. Sulpicius Maximus, Poet, Eleven Years Old”, with four lectures and a seminar at the American Academy 16-25 February, followed by a similar program at Ann Arbor 8-18 March 2010. Here Coleman examines the evidence of an unusually interesting inscribed funerary altar from the end of the first century AD to shed light on any number of broad themes in ancient poetry, rhetoric, education, agonistic competition, and sculptural art, as well as the modern reception of the Roman imperial past. See the end of this post for a full synopsis of all five installments in the series.

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At the American Academy in Rome this April 16-17, a Conference on Greek Baths and Bathing Culture

Panorama of baths, Morgantina, Sicily

On 16-17 April 2010 at the American Academy in Rome, an ambitious international conference will re-examine the evidence for Greek and Greek-style baths. The conference GREEK BATHS AND BATHING CULTURE: NEW DISCOVERIES AND APPROACHES promises to revise our understanding of the significance of an extraordinary range of ever-increasing archaeological material. That includes the earliest evidence from Greece itself, with developments down into the later Roman imperial period, where Greek and Greek-style baths continued alongside Roman complexes. Co-organizing the conference are Tokyo-based independent scholar Sandra Lucore FAAR’07, and Monika Trümper, Department of Classics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

One major contribution of the conference is that it will examine baths and related evidence in areas outside the Greek mainland—a traditional focus—including the Aegean islands, Cyprus, Egypt, southern France, and Sicily and south Italy. Here the archaeological evidence, especially from the Hellenistic period, shows much that was innovative and experimental in architectural design, decoration and construction technology. Plus the evidence from Sicily (especially Syracuse, the home of Archimedes) and south Italy is crucial to any discussion of the origins of Roman baths. Many larger topics naturally emerge from this discussion of the archaeology of Greek baths, including ownership and patronage, social customs, hygienic and curative aspects, and gender, religious and ethnic issues.

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In Rome, AAR Resident Leonard Barkan Explores the Place of Food Culture in Renaissance Art and Thought

Leonard Barkan reading from his Satyr Squarein Rome’s Piazza dei Satiri. Photo: Nick Barberio

Since late December, and through early April, Leonard Barkan is the American Academy in Rome Scholar in Residence in History of Art. He is one of the most distinguished scholars in the field of comparative literature, and his numerous writings have earned wide praise for their lucid analysis of pressing issues in literature, art history, and the interstices of these two disciplines, especially for the Renaissance.

Barkan is Class of 1943 University Professor in the Department of Comparative Literature at Princeton University, with membership also in Princeton’s English and Art and Archeology Departments. He previously taught at Michigan, Northwestern and NYU. Leonard Barkan’s many prizes include election to  membership in a number of learned societies, most recently a fellowship at the American Academy in Berlin.

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In Rome, It Snowed

Friday 12 February 2010: Rome today saw its first snowfall since January 2005, and its most memorable in 25 years. Umbrellas came out, as did everyone’s cameras. Ciampino Airport was closed, there was traffic chaos in the center, and a host of events saw cancellation. Here are how things looked from the vantage point of the American Academy..

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At the Academy in Rome, Dutch artist Roma Pas exhibits “Strangely Great” through 25 February

AAR Affiliated Fellow Roma Pas at the “Strangely Great” exhibition opening 5 February

“Over the library door of the American Academy I found this text saying: THE THINGS THAT / MUST BE ARE SO / STRANGELY GREAT.” And with this, Roma Pas introduces her exhibition of recent, untitled works—a product of her first five months at the AAR as Royal Dutch Institute Affiliated Fellow.

“The works that I’m showing at the galleries”, Pas explains in her statement for the show, “are the results of an artist-in-residence period. They react to features like inscription, ornament, ruin, archeology, wisdom and greatness and attempt to connect to the contemporary media landscape.”

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Updating the Academy: the Latest Number of the SOF News

SOF News cover from “Valentino a Roma: 45 Years of Style,” a show at Rome’s Ara Pacis

“This issue of the SOF News”, writes newsletter Editor James L. Bodnar (FAAR’80), “has, in the tradition of Janus, a group of articles that look to both the past and the future.” Members of the Academy’s Society of Fellows will already have received the fall 2009 issue in their mailboxes; and everyone can download a digital copy of this semiannual publication here.

In this number of the SOF News, the article Soft Infrastructure, by Guy J. P. Nordenson (RAAR’09) and Catherine Seavitt Nordenson (FAAR’98), “looks at the historic role of flooding in Rome and the potential for future flood control in New York”. Richard Meier’s Ara Pacis—A Drive-By Recollection, by Michael Gruber (FAAR’96) “recalls the initial design process for the Ara Pacis Museum and considers the reactions to the completed building.” James Bodnar interviews AAR Andrew Heiskell Arts Director Martin Brody (RAAR’02), and poet Sarah Arvio (FAAR’04) in Master and Torso offers recent work that arose out of her Lectureship at Princeton’s Lewis Center for the Arts.

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In Rome, the AAR Pays Homage to Composers Luigi Nono, Elliott Carter

Carter concert at the Villa Aurelia 21 January: Parco della Musica Contemporanea Ensemble

It’s hard to believe it all happened in the space of just over 25 hours. A 20 January concert on Viale Trinità dei Monti at the French Academy, co-sponsored by the AAR, in homage to composer Luigi Nono (1924-1990). The next evening, on the Gianicolo at the American Academy, a lecture and the opening of an exhibition on Nono’s opera Intolleranza 1960. And a concert at the AAR’s Villa Aurelia in homage to 101 year old Elliott Carter (FAAR’53, RAAR’63, ’69, ‘80), including the European premieres of his Tintinnabulation and Figment V for percussion ensemble.

The programs highlighted two giants of contemporary music, and underlined certain trans-Atlantic symmetries in their careers. As is well recognized, Italian composer “Luigi Nono created some of the most exploratory, disturbing, and influential music of the 20th century”, explains AAR Heiskell Arts Director Martin Brody (RAAR’02). Plus “Nono’s life as an avant-garde activist artist brought him into contact with an astonishing variety of collaborations and influences.”

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In Rome, AAR Resident Calvin Tsao Discusses an Eclectic, Global Sensibility of Design and Architecture

From left, at the Villa Aurelia, AAR Resident Calvin Tsao, AAR President Adele Chatfield-Taylor, AAR Director Carmela Franklin. Photo: Annie Schlechter

Precisely how is the domain of architecture and design evolving in a polyglottal world? Calvin Tsao FAIA offered one powerful case study Tuesday 12 January in a lively public lecture at the Academy’s Villa Aurelia. Tsao is Principal at TsAO & McKOWN Architects in New York,  and also currently serves as President of the Architectural League of New York.

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In Anaheim, Academy’s Society of Fellows gathers at annual meeting of classicists, archaeologists

When the Academy’s alums last week kicked off the new decade with a poolside party in Anaheim California, somehow the distance to Rome seemed a little bit less than the actual 10200 kilometers. The occasion? The 111th Joint Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America and the American Philological Association. Over 70 alumni/ae, affiliates, and friends of the Academy attended the Thursday 7 January reception—a blend of Mediterranean and So Cal flavors, complete with mariachi band.

Organizing the event for the American Academy in Rome and its Society of Fellows were SOF Council members Michael Gruber FAAR’96, who also delivered the Los Angeles group of the SOF, and Joanne Spurza FAAR’88. The reception immediately followed the annual business meeting of the Advisory Council of the School of Classical Studies of the AAR, and that of the Classical Society of the American Academy in Rome.

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How Sweet It Is: A Gingerbread McKim, Mead & White AAR Building is Constructed in Rome

The American Academy in Rome building on the Gianicolo hill (1912-1914) is one of just a handful of  structures outside of the United States designed by the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White—by any reckoning the most prominent designers of the Gilded Age. As it happens, firm partner Charles Follen McKim (1847-1909) was among the founders of the Academy and President of the AAR when the building was first conceived. The building has a clear Renaissance inspiration (which it shares with the MM&W north and south wings of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC), with a five-bay facade, a ‘piano nobile’, and an interior courtyard with a Paul Manship (FAAR’12) fountain in its center. It also contains most of the living and working quarters for the Rome Prize Fellows, the Library, a gallery and administrative offices, plus public rooms for many of the Academy’s events.

And now, thanks to the efforts of current Fellows Kiel Moe, Jon Calame, and a host of helping hands, the Academy’s MM&W building has been realized for the 2009 holiday season in gingerbread and gumdrops. It’s something approaching 1:100 scale, carefully constructed from the original plans. The universal reaction so far from Academy alums and friends: “Don’t eat it!”. Here’s a photo essay on how this sugary architectural wonder—all dedicated to the Academy’s Kitchen staff—came to be. Photo thanks throughout: Jon Calame and Pamela Keech (FAAR’82).

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At the Academy in Rome, Opening Up Off-Limits Italy

AAR Fellow Matthew Bronski investigates burial niches (columbaria) underground in Rome’s Doria Pamphili park. Photo: Diana Mellon

AAR Arts and Humanities Intern Diana Mellon writes:

In his first few months at the Academy, current Fellow Matthew Bronski has already gained access to scaffolding on the colonnade of St. Peter’s, consolidation works on the Palazzo Braschi, and restricted areas in Herculaneum. “If one is to do this type of work, binoculars just don’t suffice,” he says. “You really have to be hands-on. You have to be right there, have your face in the materials and be able to even poke and prod a little bit and see what’s happening.” Matthew’s historic preservation project aims to understand the physical strengths and weaknesses of ageing buildings of all time periods through up-close observation. “That’s really one of the most essential parts of my project. It’s really, in my case, the primary research,” he says.

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In Rome, ‘Performing Voices’ and the Week that Followed

At the Academy’s Villa Aurelia, soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci and pianist Donald Sulzen receive a standing ovation from “Performing Voices” participants

It’s been quite a month at the American Academy in Rome—and it’s not much more than half over. Following hard on the heels of the Academy’s much-praised 2 December Cabaret in NYC, came a blockbuster conference in Rome, co-sponsored by the AAR and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin. Entitled “Performing Voices: Between Embodiment and Mediation”, this ambitious conference ran for three days (Friday 4 December-Sunday 6 December) at the Academy’s Villa Aurelia. Co-facilitating were Martin Brody (RAAR’02), Heiskell Arts Director at the AAR, and Julia Kursell and Andreas Mayer, Research Scholars at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.

The aim of the conference was to foster a new understanding of the paradox of the singing voice, by bringing together singers, scientists, historians, philosophers, and musicologists. Carmela Vircillo Franklin (FAAR’85, RAAR’02), AAR Director, and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, jointly introduced the proceedings. A thrilling centerpiece of the conference was a recital at the Villa Aurelia, Echi della Belle Époque, by soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci and pianist Donald Sulzen.

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In Rome, ‘Flying Soles’ Showcases the Work of NY Designer Lincoln Brown

In Rome, the American Academy unveils this week a long-anticipated  exhibition of the work of fashion designer Lincoln Brown, curated by Ester Coen and Lexi Eberspacher.

 The show opens Thursday 10 December from 18.00 to 21.00, and remains on view by appointment through 14 January 2010. Founder of Lincoln’s NY, Lincoln Brown is a noted designer of shoes and accessories. His work has won over style-conscious celebrities such as the artist Enzo Cucchi, the designer Anna Sui, the actress Halle Berry, and the musician Mary J. Blige—to name just a few.

The exhibition “Flying Soles” features Lincoln’s NY’s one-of-a-kind, dazzling and hand-made shoes.  

Plus the event aims to cross over the threshold of the American Academy, and reach into the center of Rome. See a narrated slideshow of the exhibit here.

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Looking back, a week of November events at the American Academy in Rome

As the American Academy prepares for its Giorno del Ringraziamento (=Thanksgiving) festivities, there’s something to be said for taking stock—if only of events of the days leading up to the holiday.

Those events included two shop talks by current Fellows (filmmaker Abigail Child, typographer Russell Maret), a commemoration of the life of Roman historian Lily Ross Taylor (FAAR’18) by Mellon Professor Corey Brennan, a moonlit “walk and talk” for members of the Academy community along the Tiber (with contributions by Fellows Robert Hammond and Kiel Moe), a fireside chat by Rachel Donadio (Rome Bureau Chief for The New York Times),  a marathon of contemporary music at the Villa Aurelia under the auspices of the Nuova Consonanza artistic circle (with performances by Fellows Lisa Bielawa and Don Byron), and a visit by the newly appointed US Ambassador to the Italian Republic and San Marino, David H. Thorne. All that was over eight—not atypical—days in all. A few glimpses of that week can be found below…

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A happy 90th birthday to architectural historian and AAR Trustee Emeritus James S. Ackerman (FAAR’52, RAAR’65, ‘70, ‘75, ‘80)

James Ackerman at the Villa Lante (Rome), October 2009

It can be confidently stated that the leading historian of Renaissance architecture and Italian Renaissance architectural theory is James Sloss Ackerman (FAAR’52, RAAR’65, ‘70, ‘75, ‘80), Trustee of the American Academy in Rome 1967-1984, and now Trustee Emeritus. As it happens, James Ackerman and his wife, artist and professor Jill Slosburg-Ackerman, are spending five weeks at the AAR this fall. During that time, he has delivered a lecture on “Michelangelo, Palladio and Public Magnificence” to a capacity audience in the Academy lecture room, and has participated in a wide range of less formal walks and talks in Rome. Plus, on 8 November, he celebrated his 90th birthday at the Academy.

James Ackerman was educated at Yale; his graduate work was at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, completing his degrees (MA 1947, PhD 1952) following World War II service in the US Army in Italy. From 1949 through 1952, he was a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. Ackerman taught at Berkeley and from 1960 at Harvard as Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Fine Arts until his retirement in 1990. In an in-depth interview, AAR Arts and Humanities Intern Diana Mellon asks James Ackerman about his formative experiences in Italy, his fellowship years at the AAR, his perceptions of changes at the American Academy over the decades, and of larger developments in the field of architectural history. And following the interview is appended Ackerman’s own current “must see” list for Rome and Venice.

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Three Exhibitions and a Monograph for Richard Barnes FAAR’06

From the cover of Richard Barnes’ new book (Princeton Architectural Press, 2009)

The work of New York-based photographer Richard Barnes, FAAR’06, is the subject of three exhibitions and a new monograph.

The University of Michigan Art Museum in Ann Arbor has just opened a Barnes solo show titled (Un)natural History: The Museum Unveiled. And an exhibition titled Past Perfect/Future Tense features all new work and is located at the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan where Richard Barnes is the 2009 Sidman Fellow for the Arts. Included in this show is a full scale cast of a primitive whale species hung from the ceiling of the gallery.

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At the AAR: Celebrating Nancy A. Winter, Honoring Antonio Martina

On Tuesday 20 October 2009 the American Academy in Rome celebrated the publication of Symbols of Wealth and Power: Architectural Terracotta Decoration in Etruria and Central Italy, 640-510 B.C. by Nancy A. Winter. It is the latest installment, the 9th, in the Supplements to the Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, published by the University of Michigan Press, and the most significant contribution to Etruscan architectural history in the last 70 years.

Nancy Winter presented on her new monumental book—some 728 pages—with Ingrid E.M. Edlund-Berry (FAAR’84) of the University of Texas at Austin as commentator. The audience included many of the leading ancient terracotta experts in the world, gathered in Rome for the conference Deliciae Fictiles IV at the Dutch Academy, as well as members of the AAR community. 

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At the AAR Gallery, Meteor Stream: Recital in Four Dominions, by Terry Adkins After John Brown

Terry Adkins, Professor of Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania, is the current Jesse Howard, Jr./Jacob H. Lazarus-Metropolitan Museum of Art Rome Prize Fellow in Visual Arts at the American Academy in Rome. On Friday 16 October 2009 his show Meteor Stream: Recital in Four Dominions opened in the Gallery of the American Academy, to a large and responsive audience from the AAR and the Roman public. Read a synopsis and interview with Adkins (in Italian, by Giovanna Sarno) here.

Meteor Stream is the latest incarnation of Terry Adkins’ ongoing cycle of site-inspired recitals on the abolitionist John Brown that began in 1999 at the John Brown House and sheep farm in Akron, Ohio. Commemorating the 150th anniversary of his Harper’s Ferry, Virginia campaign, the opening of Meteor Stream coincided with the inception of Brown’s 16 October 1859 raid on a U.S. armory to his execution by hanging on that December 2nd at Charles Town (West Virginia).

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Book launch at the AAR: Oretta Zanini De Vita’s Encyclopedia of Pasta

Credit: Annie Schlechter

An audience of more than one hundred packed the American Academy in Rome on Saturday morning 10 October 2009 for the launch of the English translation of Oretta Zanini De Vita’s Encyclopedia of Pasta (2009). The book is a carefully researched compendium of historical and geographical information on this staple of the Italian diet, and is the latest installment in the California Studies in Food and Culture series of the University of California Press.

Rachel Donadio in the 14 October 2009 New York Times profiled Zanini De Vita’s Encyclopedia, terming it “a social history disguised as a food book”.  The New York Times article also highlighted the warm reception Oretta Zanini De Vita has received at the Academy. “’I think of her as a kind of Julia Child,’ said Mona Talbott, the executive chef at the American Academy in Rome and coordinator of its Rome Sustainable Food Project, founded by Alice Waters. ‘Julia Child demystified French food. Oretta demystifies pasta.’” You can read eyewitness accounts of the 10 October AAR event by current Fellow Matthew Bronski here (”Week Five”) and by Fellow Traveler (and food expert) Amy Campion here.

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From the town of Ciciliano in Lazio, a notable tribute to Lily Ross Taylor FAAR’18

Portrait bust of Lily Ross Taylor in the AAR Library

This 18 November marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Lily Ross Taylor (1886-1969) FAAR’18, who is widely and justifiably regarded as one of the foremost Romanists that North America has produced. During her career at Vassar and (especially) Bryn Mawr, Taylor produced six books—each of unusual importance—some seventy articles and almost sixty reviews.  Taylor also was the first woman to hold a Rome Prize in the united American Academy in Rome, and served as Professor-in-Charge at the AAR during two pivotal eras (1934-1935, and 1951-1955).

In one of her essays that appeared in Memoirs of the American Academy of Rome, Taylor surveyed the vexed problem of the location of the ancient municipality of ancient Trebula Suffenas, before definitively placing its location in the territory of modern Ciciliano, 13 km east of Tivoli in Lazio. Here Taylor also traced the whole story of the town’s Plautii Silvani, a powerful family that formed part of the circle of the emperor Augustus and his wife Livia. This past weekend a cultural association from the town of Ciciliano “Committee Article 9” paid tribute to Lily Ross Taylor and her 1954 article “Trebula Suffenas and the Plautii Silvani” by naming a piazza and adjoining garden in her honor, complete with a memorial stele.

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Celebrating art historian Stephanie Leone FAAR’00 at the Palazzo Pamphilj in Piazza Navona

The magnificent Galleria Cortona of the Brazilian Embassy in Rome’s Piazza Navona was the setting Thursday 8 October for a presentation and panel discussion of the recent book of Stephanie Leone FAAR’00, The Palazzo Pamphili in Piazza Navona:  Constructing Identity in Early Modern Rome (Harvey Miller/ Brepols, 2008).

Stephanie Leone, a 2001 Ph.D. in Art History from Rutgers University, is associate professor in the Fine Arts department of Boston College. Aurimar Jacobino de Barros Nunes, Primo Segretario at the Embassy of Brazil in Rome, organized the event in collaboration with Anne Coulson from the Programs Department of the American Academy in Rome.

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A Cabaret for the Academy, Wednesday 2 December 09 in NYC

Get ready for a great party: the American Academy in Rome Cabaret, the evening of Wednesday 2 December 2009, in New York City.

Performers include Laurie Anderson, RAAR’06, Derek Bermel, FAAR’02, Molissa Fenley, FAAR’08…and more. The venue is hard to beat: the Angel Orensanz Foundation at 172 Norfolk Street, in New York’s Lower East Side.  It’s an ex-synagogue turned downtown event space.

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An interview with photographer Tod Papageorge RAAR’09

Tod Papageorge. Credit: Deborah Flomenhaft

Tod Papageorge is the Walker Evans Professor of Photography and Director of Graduate Studies in Photography at the Yale School of Art. The Features section of the Academy website has posted eight compelling photographs from his work this summer in Rome (”In the Street, June 15-July 27″). Recently AAR Mellon Professor Corey Brennan caught up with Papageorge to ask him about his six weeks at the Academy this summer as the Photographer in Residence, and about some aspects of his approach to photography in general.

You are well-known as a black-and-white photographer of people in public spaces. For your Rome photographs, you are using a digital camera (a Leica M8.2) for the first time, and shooting in color. How much of a departure are your Rome images from your work to date?

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For painter Doug Argue FAAR’98, the 2009 London International Creative Competition first prize

“My work is meant to be physically experienced”, says San Francisco based artist Doug Argue FAAR’98. Still, a selection of images of Argue’s meticulous, large-scale paintings impressed the jurors of the London International Creative Competition (LICC) so much that they awarded the artist first prize in its 2009 contest. The announcement was made in a ceremony at the Soho Theatre on London’s Dean Street the evening of 6 September.

Now in its fourth year, the LICC “was formed to provide an open platform and an even playing field for artists from all walks of life.” The LICC’s mission statement underlines its breadth and scale: “the competition is open to artists from around the world and is judged solely on the artwork.” It’s a massive enterprise: this year saw entries from over 5000 artists from more than five dozen countries, yielding fifteen finalists. Argue’s work, as well as that of the other finalists, will also be showcased during the 2009 Lucie Awards for photography at New York’s Alice Tully Hall on 19 October.

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By Blake Middleton FAAR’82: In memoriam, Thomas L. Schumacher (1941-2009), FAAR’69, RAAR’91

Thomas Schumacher, 2005. Courtesy University of Maryland

Architect Blake Middleton FAAR‘82 writes: Thomas L. Schumacher, FAAR’69, RAAR’91, professor of architecture at the University of Maryland, died on July 15, 2009 after a short battle with brain cancer. He was 67 years old. Tom also taught at Princeton and Virginia, and joined the Maryland faculty in 1984, teaching architectural design studios, history and theory courses. [See here for an obituary on the Abitare website.]

His passion for the Eternal City manifested itself in many ways over a four decade career beginning with his Academy Fellowship studies in 1967. He came to speak fluent Italian, originated the Maryland Rome architecture program, visited the city almost on an annual basis with students or during his own research forays, and published numerous books and articles on Italian modern architecture of the 1930s. Over the last three decades I saw Tom only intermittently, but he was an inspiration in my development as an architect and teacher, and to countless others. In putting this tribute together, I have gathered some recollections from his colleagues and friends, and have tried to briefly sketch a picture of Tom as architect, scholar, educator, and passionate Italophile (see Note 1 at end).

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Looking back at the AAR’s summer 2009: the Gabii Project

An early look at Gabii’s Temple of Juno, from E. Q. Visconti, Monumenti gabini (1835)

The holiday of Ferragosto (15 August) has now come and gone, so perhaps it’s not too early to start taking stock of this past summer at and around the American Academy in Rome. Let’s start 12 miles east of the city—with the field program of the Gabii Project, an unusually promising new major archaeological campaign under the patrocinio of the AAR. The Academy in recent years has extended this “patronage” status to about a dozen significant Roman archaeological excavations, at sites that range from the Forum and Palatine to points as far afield as the island of Jerba in Tunisia. But the Gabii Project is easily the largest of these AAR-affiliated digs.

The Gabii Project is an international, multi-institution initiative under the direction of Professor Nicola Terrenato of the University of Michigan. The Project’s goal is the excavation, study, interpretation, and analysis of Gabii, an ancient city-state in Latium that had a significant cultural influence on Rome, especially in the sphere of religion. It now emerges—thanks specifically to the work of the Project—that Gabii also offers a surprisingly early example for Italy of regular, orthogonal town planning. The details of this important discovery for ancient urbanism are scheduled for publication in the October 2009 issue of the American Journal of Archaeology. See also the end of this post for a video interview on the site of Gabii with Nicola Terrenato, where he explains some of the more significant attributes of the ancient city.

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‘Konzert zur Einweihung’: Yotam Haber FAAR’08 composes for architect Peter Zumthor RAAR’08

Yotam Haber and Peter Zumthor at Leis. Credit (all photographs): Luca Nostri

Peter Zumthor RAAR’08—and 2009 Pritzker Architecture Prize winner—recently designed and built a new house for his wife Annalisa in Leis, a tiny five family settlement high up in the mountains above the town of Vals in Switzerland. He celebrated the event by commissioning two pieces of music from Yotam Haber FAAR ’08, which were perfomed in an intimate concert in Leis on 21 June. Roberto Caracciolo, Visual Arts Liaison to the American Academy in Rome, was there, as was incoming Italian Fellow in the Arts, Luca Nostri, who photographed the occasion. Roberto Caracciolo writes:

“The concert took place in Leis’ St. Jakob Kapelle, a very small and charming church, decorated with simple frescoes. Before the music started Annalisa Zumthor introduced and thanked the audience which was a unique way of welcoming all present.”

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New memoir ‘Goat Song’ wins instant accolades for writer Brad Kessler FAAR’09

Credit: Dona Ann McAdams

It’s been out only a month, but Brad Kessler’s new memoir is set to go into a second printing. Quite an impressive achievement for any author—and even more striking since Kessler’s book is essentially an elegy to goats.

This past year Brad Kessler FAAR’09 has been the recipient of the John Guare Writer’s Fund Rome Prize, a gift of Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman. It was at the American Academy that he completed Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, a Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese (Scribner). He also is the author of the novel Birds in Fall (Scribner), winner of the 2007 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Goat Song, writes Kessler, is “a story about what it’s like to live with animals who directly feed you. I tell of cheese and culture and agriculture, but also of the rediscovery of a pastoral life.”

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For the latest from the AAR and its alums, Spring 2009 SOF News now online

The odd thing is that it feels even quicker than a semiannual. Just a few short months ago—or at least it seemed that way—the Winter 2008/9 edition of the Society of Fellows News rolled off the presses and into our mailboxes. And at the same time a downloadable .pdf version on the SOF webpage joined seven year’s worth of archived back issues.

And then last month the latest number popped up, again in large format and blazing full color. You can read the Spring 2009 SOF News here in .pdf format. On the cover (and inside): Stephen Harby FAAR’00 shares an evocative portfolio of sketches from his journey to some of the less well known places of Rajasthan in northern India.

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From LIFE archives, more unpublished glimpses of 1957 American Academy in Rome

New view of writer Ralph Ellison FAAR’57, at the Academy’s Casa Rustica. Credit: James Whitmore/LIFE

Last November, Google Inc. began hosting an online archive of LIFE magazine’s photographs. Many images in this archive—there are reportedly some 10 million in all—never saw print publication. It seems Google is now posting these photos a few million at a time. But many carry no caption, or even date. Plus typos are rampant. So a bit of detective work is often necessary to find what you want and then sort out what you are seeing.

In December the Society of Fellows Weblog reported on the first batch of images that the LIFE/Google partnership produced. That included about 125 largely unpublished photos of the American Academy in Rome in 1947, 1949, and 1957. Now half a year later, a few hundred new photos from the May 1957 LIFE photoshoot have cropped up via Google Images. You can see the full set here (Google search phrase: “American Academy in Home”!).

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In Buenos Aires ceremony, architect Peter Zumthor RAAR’08 receives 2009 Pritzker Architecture Prize

Peter Zumthor RAAR’08. Credit: Gary Ebner

Swiss architect Peter Zumthor RAAR’08 received this year’s prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize at a ceremony last Friday (29 May) in Argentina at the Legislative Palace of the City of Buenos Aires.

Zumthor, aged 66, received a $100,000 grant and a bronze medallion for what is widely considered as the “Nobel Prize of architecture”. The Pritzker Prize was established in 1979 by the Pritzker family, based in Chicago, to honor a living architect whose works produce “consistent and significant contributions to humanity.”

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At Brooklyn Museum, ‘Harriet Hosmer, Lost and Found’, an exhibition of watercolors by Patricia Cronin FAAR’07

Patricia Cronin, The Sleeping Faun by Harriet Hosmer, 1865 (2006)

A group of twenty-eight watercolors by Brooklyn-based conceptual artist Patricia Cronin FAAR’07, inspired by the work of nineteenth-century sculptor Harriet Hosmer (1830-1908), will be on view in the Sackler Wing of the Brooklyn Museum from today (5 June 2009) through 24 January 2010.

In an article for Artnet, Charlie Fitch sketches out the basics of this ambitious and unusually memorable show, entitled Harriet Hosmer: Lost and Found.

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Celebrating Pina Pasquantonio, for 25 extraordinary years of service on the staff of the AAR

Pina Pasquantonio. Credit: James Bodnar FAAR’80

In Rome, it’s the start of Trustees’ Week at the Academy. And one of the most important items on the AAR community’s agenda is to celebrate Pina Pasquantonio, who now marks her 25th year on the staff of the American Academy.

Pina, who holds the title of Assistant Director of Operations, has had a unique and extraordinary effect on the life of every Fellow and Resident since 1984.

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This spring, spotlight on AAR composers: Bermel, Carter, Currier, Makan, Norman, Rohde, Ueno

It’s been quite a season for American Academy in Rome Fellows in Musical Composition. Here are just three snapshots from the last few months…

On 11 March, the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton NJ) announced the appointment of composer and clarinetist Derek Bermel FAAR’02 as its Artist-in-Residence. His term begins on 1 July 2009.

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A new SOF President for 2009: painter Drew Beattie FAAR’95

The Council of the AAR Society of Fellows has elected painter Drew Beattie, FAAR’95 in Visual Arts, interim President of the Academy’s alumni organization for the remainder of 2009.

Beattie, who takes office 21 May, replaces T. Corey Brennan FAAR’88, who is stepping down to join the staff of the Academy this July as Mellon Professor-in-Charge for a three year term.

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A 2009 C.O.L.A. Visual Art Award (and Individual Artists Exhibit) for Maureen Selwood FAAR’03

Maureen Selwood. Credit: Monica Nouwens

The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs has awarded its peer-reviewed 2009 City of Los Angeles (C.O.L.A.) Individual Artist Fellowships to fifteen exemplary mid-career artists.

Among them – one of nine in the visual arts – is Maureen Selwood FAAR’03.

Los Angeles is one of a handful of municipalities honoring local artists with grant contracts (in this case, worth $10,000) to create and present new works for the public.

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NYC photo exhibit explores architectural work at the pre-WWII American Academy in Rome

Piazza del Popolo and the Pincio Gardens, Rome. Aerial Perspective. Ernest F. Lewis FAAR’11

Now on display at the New York offices (7 East 60th Street) of the AAR: "An Exhibition of Architectural Drawings by the Fellows of the American Academy in Rome, 1910-1935".

The show is curated by Fikret K. Yegul, RAAR ’98 (Professor, History of Architecture/Classical Archaeology, University of California, Santa Barbara) and John Pinto, FAAR ’75, RAAR ’06 (The Howard Crosby Butler Professor of Architectural History, Princeton University).

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Poet Craig Arnold FAAR’06 missing on Japanese island during volcano hike

Craig Arnold FAAR’06 is currently missing on Kuchinoerabu-jima, a small island in the northern Ryukyu Islands of southern Japan, just west of Yakushima. For more than a week, teams searched on both land and from the air for this award-winning poet and University of Wyoming professor who failed to return from a hike to a volcano on Monday 27 April. Arnold was doing research for a poetry and essay book on volcanoes. Though the search now has been scaled down, a small US-based team was reported to be finding new clues on Wednesday 6 May.

For the details, and how you can help, the Poetry Foundation blog provides the fullest account. The Facebook group "Find Craig Arnold", the only site associated with Arnold’s family, has gathered over 3000 members since its launch, and provides up to the minute news of the rescue mission. Most recently (8 May) it reports "his trail indicates that after sustaining a leg injury, Craig fell from a very high and very dangerous cliff and there is virtually no possibility that Craig could have survived that fall."

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AAR ‘ultime notizie’: for late April, a look at what the papers (and e-media) say

Don’t ask why it’s taken so long. But starting now on this Weblog’s sidebar, you can track breaking news about the American Academy in Rome and the members of its Society of Fellows via a Google News feed. (Look to the right and scroll down a bit.)

Of course, there will always be more than a few AAR items that escape Google’s automated news aggregator.

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Trustee Thom Mayne, Bruce Nauman RAAR’87, Jessye Norman receive AAR Centennial Medals at 15 April NYC Gala

Soprano Jessye Norman upon her award of the Centennial Medal of the American Academy in Rome

Cipriani 42nd Street, New York, 15 April 2009.

The American Academy in Rome, Adele Chatfield-Taylor, FAAR’84, President, and William B. Hart, Chairman of the Board, hosted the AAR’s annual Gala dinner. This year’s theme was "Celebrating the Arts".

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AAR Fellows, Residents for 2009/10 announced at Rome Prize Ceremony in New York

New York’s Metropolitan Club was the setting on 16 April for the announcement of the 2009/10 Fellows and Residents of the American Academy in Rome at the Arthur and Janet C. Ross Rome Prize Ceremony.

Lots to report – including the details of an electrifying performance at that event by the Cassatt String Quartet of pieces by Academy composers Andrew Norman FAAR’07, Ken Ueno FAAR’07 and Sebastian Currier FAAR’94.

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Remembering Dorothy Cullman (1918-2009), longtime Trustee and magnificent supporter of the American Academy in Rome

Trustees Chuck Close and Dorothy Cullman at the April 2001 AAR Benefit (Cipriani 42nd St.)

The Trustees, Fellows and staff of the American Academy in Rome mourn the loss of our dear longtime Trustee, Dorothy Cullman. She died peacefully on April 6 at home due to complications from a long illness.

Dorothy Cullman served as an extraordinarily engaged member of the Academy’s Board of Trustees from 1991 to 2004, and after that as a Trustee Emerita.

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On a National Day of Mourning in Italy for Abruzzo earthquake victims, ways to help

The terrain of L’Aquila in Abruzzo, from the N by NW as seen by Google Earth

Our Pina Pasquantonio (AAR Assistant Director for Operations, and abruzzese) writes from the American Academy in Rome:

"As many of you may already know the region of Abruzzo and, more specifically, the town of L’Aquila and its immediate surroundings were struck by a terrible earthquake on Monday. The death toll has risen above 280 and over 20,000 people are homeless. L’Aquila is a beautiful medieval town and most of its historic monuments have been very seriously damaged, if not destroyed. The end is not in sight yet as the tremors continue and people are spending nights outside of their homes in cars or in tents."

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Academy Benefits for 2009: Looking back at Ojai, and ahead to April and May galas in New York, Rome

Scene from last year’s AAR April gala at Cipriani 42nd Street NYC

The centerpiece of the Academy’s events year comes Wednesday 15 April 2009 at Cipriani 42nd Street NYC, a benefit gala to celebrate the arts that will honor AAR Trustee and architect Thom Mayne, artist Bruce Nauman, and opera singer Jessye Norman.

Co-chairing the event are composer Robert Beaser FAAR’78, architect Wendy Evans Joseph FAAR’84, and visual artist Laurie Simmons RAAR’05. Click here for the Benefit Reply Card and schedule of (tax deductible) ticket prices. Proceeds from the Benefit support the ongoing programs of the American Academy in Rome.

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