For the third consecutive year, the American Academy in Rome convenes artists, scientists, and humanists to mark the anniversary of Galileo's demonstration of the telescope in 1611 on what is now our site.
Galileo Week is our annual platform for interdisciplinary exploration. Building on last year’s edition, which featured thinkers Naomi Ehrich Leonard, Kate Crawford, Alvin Curran, and Erica Hunt, the 2026 program brings together neuroscientists, conservators, and artists to explore how objects hold memory.
Presented at the site where Galileo Galilei first demonstrated his telescope in Rome, the overarching theme will be explored through a conference, Conservation and the Brain: A Collaboration on Remembering Through Things; two public talks, one about neuroscience and memory and the other about an opera on a celestial object between planet and star; and finally the performance of an oratorio devoted to objects and memory. By linking science and art, the week examines how we construct meaning, assign value, and conserve both knowledge and objects, revealing insights that are both practical and profoundly human.
“Galileo Week expands upon the Academy’s deep-rooted commitment to fostering dialogue across disciplines, pushing its boundaries even further into a dynamic creative space that unites scientists, artists, and humanists,” said Peter N. Miller, President and CEO of the American Academy in Rome. “Following and continuing the discussions in mid-March which we framed as ‘Material Intelligence’, we will still be talking about objects and how they contribute to our intelligence, but focusing it on memory.”
Across its three programs, Galileo Week 2026 highlights how cutting-edge research and contemporary practice intersect: from neuroscientific insights into memory, to musical experiments that translate astrophysical phenomena into perception, to performances that transform absence into collective experience. Together, they reveal the ways in which art and science can illuminate the unseen, challenge our assumptions, and reshape the way we preserve and understand the world around us.
By placing these diverse disciplines in conversation, Galileo Week exemplifies the Academy’s mission: cultivating spaces where inquiry is shared, knowledge is expanded, and new ways of thinking emerge.
As an opening act, this lecture examines how memory functions not as a static archive, but as a dynamic system. Drawing on current research, Shohamy explores how the brain organizes experience, linking memory to perception, decision-making, and imagination.
This perspective reframes memory as an active force—one that continuously reshapes the past in relation to the present and future. In this context, conservation is not only a matter of safeguarding objects, but also of understanding how humans construct meaning through them
An interdisciplinary project that translates astrophysical data into sound, focusing on brown dwarfs—celestial bodies that exist between planets and stars and emit light largely outside the visible spectrum—the work challenges the limits of human perception. Through experimental composition and narrative, Rogue Objects creates new pathways for engaging with phenomena that cannot be directly seen, proposing artistic practice as a method for extending scientific understanding.
The project reflects a central premise of Galileo Week: that the intersection of art and science can generate new forms of inquiry, making complex knowledge accessible through sensory and imaginative experience.
April 16: Lost Objects by Bang on a Can at the Auditorium Parco della Musica
Composed by Michael Gordon, David Lang (1991 Fellow, 2017 Resident), and Julia Wolfe (2025 Resident), and interpreted by Bang on a Can Lost Objects Ensemble and Ekmeles along with the PMCE Ensemble, the work is a large-scale oratorio that reflects on loss—of people, objects, and cultural practices—through a layered musical language that brings together different traditions and forms.
In transforming absence into shared experience, Lost Objects resonates with the broader themes of the week, offering a meditation on how memory persists through sound, narrative, and collective listening.
Leadership support for Galileo Week is provided by Simons Foundation International and two Anonymous Donors. Major support is provided by the Carla Fendi Foundation.