“Returning to Rome to live after 28 years, I will compile and analyze over two decades of pioneer conservation projects in the Spanish Caribbean, to be used to create a viable model for other regional areas to understand and conserve their local technologies. These past investigations will be complemented and enriched by my study of contemporary Italian architectural conservation/preservation practices, which in essence, deal with similar building techniques and traditional construction materials, since Roman buildings constituted the basis for Spanish-Colonial Caribbean construction technologies. My work at the Academy will contribute to a proposed publication designed to be a valuable tool to professionals, trades people and students dealing with 16th - 20th century buildings in our area of the West Indies. Rubble-masonry, wood, brick, stone and concrete technologies will be presented through historic structures in the region. The publication will provide not only specific research topics for the student, but more importantly, systematic approaches and processes in the understanding of the built environment and successful interventions into historic constructions.”
Current
Rome Prize Fellows and Projects
The American Academy in Rome awards the Rome Prize to a select group of artists and scholars, after an application process that begins in the fall of each year. The winners, announced in the spring, are invited to Rome to pursue their work in an atmosphere conducive to intellectual and artistic freedom, interdisciplinary exchange, and innovation. The 2011-12 Rome Prize winners are listed here with a brief project summary in their own words.
To download the brochure from the Rome Prize Ceremony held in New York on 13 April, 2011, announcing the 2011-2012 Rome Prize winners click here.
Historic Preservation and Conservation
Executive Director, Intermuseum Conservation Association, Cleveland, Ohio
“I will investigate Renaissance and Baroque paintings in and around Rome that were destination sites for artists and writers in the 18-19th c. to determine how they may have physically changed over time with evolving visual alterations. I intend to study published and unpublished travel journals, manuscript texts from the same periods, and other documents with evaluations and interpretations of these paintings. I will research how the 18-19th c. often mistaken interpretations, written perceptions, and art historical analysis of these works were compromised by the context of their period cultural and aesthetic values and why these changed works of art prompted new aesthetics for painters. This research will reveal rich and important material for a discourse on period perceptions of altered physical objects as cultural icons and commodity and may serve as a model for interpreting how desires and perspectives influence visual culture interpretation to suit each period's needs.”
