Arts

Arts provides support to the annual Rome Prize Fellows in architecture, design arts, historic preservation and conservation, landscape architecture, literature, musical composition, and visual arts. The School of Fine Arts also sponsors public programs to provide Fellows a cultural bridge between the United States, Italy, and Europe.

Among the activities designed for the Fellows are site visits and trips to locations of cultural interest as well as visits to the Academy by influential artists and scholars. Activities include trips to the Venice art and architecture Biennali and other important exhibitions, visits to major architectural sites, studio visits in and around Rome, and lectures by visiting American artists, as well as day-to-day exchanges with Residents and other distinguished visitors to the Academy.

In addition, Arts sponsors public exhibitions, lectures, and concerts. Each year, three to four exhibitions are presented in the Academy’s gallery, including the annual Fellows Exhibition presenting the work of that year’s Fine Arts Fellows at the end of their residence. Other exhibitions focus on the work of prominent artists, architects, and designers—particularly Americans whose work has not been widely viewed in Europe—as well as historical and thematic exhibitions of timely interest. Exhibitions are accompanied by public lectures by participating artists and scholars.

During the course of the year, the School of Fine Arts also invites distinguished artists, writers, and scholars to hold lectures, readings, and symposia, which are free to the public. Each year, The Academy and Arts sponsors an active music program presenting concerts and recitals by a variety of American and European musicians with and emphasis on music by twentieth-century American composers. The Arts program is administered by Peter Benson Miller, the Andrew Heiskell Arts Director, working with a network of Arts and Humanities Advisors to the American Academy in Rome.