Far Afield

Nathaniel Mackey (2017 Resident) talked to the New Yorker in advance of several new releases: three volumes of poetry collected under the name Double Trio; an album of words and sounds called Fugitive Equation (with the Creaking Breeze Ensemble); and a book of essays titled Nathaniel Mackey, Destination Out.

Ersela Kripa and Stephen Mueller (2011 Fellows) have won a 2021 Arts and Letters Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Kripa and Mueller are the founders of AGENCY, a collaborative interdisciplinary practice based in El Paso, Texas.

David Karmon, a 2016 Fellow and the author of the forthcoming book Architecture and the Senses in the Italian Renaissance, talks to the University of California Press about taking the reins of the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians as editor.

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has awarded 2021 fellowships to Nina C. Young (2016 Fellow) in music composition and James Siena (2013 Resident) in fine arts.

Kirstin Valdez Quade (2019 Fellow) talks to NPR’s Scott Simon about her debut novel, The Five Wounds, which she worked on during her year in Rome.

Yehudi Wyner, a 1956 Rome Prize Fellow in musical composition, was awarded a 2021 Gold Medal for Music by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Chang-rae Lee (2008 Resident) was given the 2021 Award of Merit for the Novel, a $25,000 prize that honors an outstanding writer who represents excellence in the craft of the novel, by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

The American Academy of Arts and Letters has given a 2021 Arts and Letters Award in Art to Suzanne Bocanegra (1991 Fellow) and a 2021 John Koch Award in Art to Jennifer Packer (2021 Fellow).

The Archaeological Institute of America has appointed Emma Blake, a 2013 Fellow in ancient studies, and Robert Schon as the next joint editors-in-chief of the American Journal of Archaeology.

Last week Richard Rezac (2007 Fellow) opened a solo exhibition at Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago. Titled Cast, the show is on view through May 8 and features a series of works Rezac made within the last year.

Michael Bierut (2016 Resident, current AAR Trustee) led a team at Pentagram that finished the two-year project of creating a new brand identity for the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, which includes the San Diego Zoo and San Diego Zoo Safari Park.

Judith H. Dobrzynski of the Wall Street Journal has reviewed Paul Manship: Ancient Made Modern, an exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art that illuminates how this sculptor—a 1912 Rome Prize Fellow and the creator of AAR’s Cortile fountain—became a master of his craft.

Steve Parker (2021 Fellow) talks to Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim (2018 Resident) of the New York Times about his “war tuba,” a musical instrument that is a sculptural listening device instead of a sound maker. His inspirations are the early-twentieth-century military sound locators that detected enemy aircraft before the advent of radar.

The US General Services Administration has commissioned Ann Hamilton (2017 Resident) to create an Art in Architecture project for the new federal courthouse under construction in Des Moines, Iowa.

Tomorrow Pamela Salisbury Gallery in Hudson, New York, will present the opening of AutoRevisionism, an exhibition of paintings and drawings by 2012 Fellow Elliott Green. The show will continue until April 4.

Among the eighteen recipients of the American Academy of Arts and Letters music awards are David Sanford (2003 Fellow), Yotam Haber (2008 Fellow), Lei Liang (2012 Fellow), Annie Gosfield (2016 Resident), and William Dougherty (2021 Fellow).

Richard Powell (2018 Resident) of Duke University talked to Artnet News about the arc of his career and the evolution of scholarship into Black art history.

Jack Livings (2017 Fellow) worked on his first novel, The Blizzard Party, during his Rome Prize year. It’s about to be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Roger Bond Martin (1964 Fellow), cofounder of the University of Minnesota’s Department of Landscape Architecture, has died. He was known in the Twin Cities for the renovation of the Grand Rounds parkway system and for leading the design of the Minnesota Zoo. In 1968, Martin established InterDesign with graphic designer Peter Seitz and systems analyst Stephen Kahne.

AAR’s new director Avinoam Shalem spoke with Artribune about the Academy’s reopening, the incoming Fellows, and the challenges an international research institution faces in COVID times.

Three 2009 Fellows—Marie Lorenz (visual arts), Dana Spiotta (literature), and Kurt Rohde (musical composition)—won a 2021 Creative Capital grant in opera and sculpture for their project, Newtown Odyssey.

Jiminie Ha (2012 Fellow) is the newly appointed director of graphic design for the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Christopher Cerrone (2016 Fellow) was among the composers and performers selected for the Washington Post’s inaugural class of 21 for ’21.

The puppeteer Basil Twist (2019 Fellow) is restaging Jean-Joseph de Mondonville’s Titon et l’Aurore, an eighteenth-century Baroque opera, in Paris.

A recent exhibition of work by Italian Fellow Corinna Gosmaro at the Gallery Apart in Rome—titled CHUTZPAH!—was reviewed by Ida Panicelli and published in the January/February 2021 issue of Artforum.

Beverly McIver (2018 Fellow) talked to Art and Object about how her year in Rome affected the current direction of her painting. McIver’s work is currently on view at Craven Allen Gallery in Durham, North Carolina.

Sinclair Bell, associate professor of art history at Northern Illinois University, a 2003 Rome Prize Fellow, and editor of the Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome series, has won a $60,000 NEH Fellowship for his project “Race and Representation in the Roman Empire: Images of Aethiopians in Imperial Visual and Material Culture.”

The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art is presenting a Zoom talk, “Your Turn,” with three 2006 Fellows—Pamela Hovland (design), Alex Schweder (architecture), and Ward Shelley (visual arts)—on Friday, January 8 at noon.

A solo exhibition of paintings and drawings by Jennifer Packer, winner of the 2020 Nancy B. Negley Rome Prize, is on view at the Serpentine Galleries in London through March 2021 (temporarily closed now). The show, titled The Eye Is Not Satisfied With Seeing, features portraits of friends and family and still lifes of flowers.

The composer Katherine Balch, winner of the 2020 Elliott Carter Rome Prize, offers an artist-curated playlist for I Care If You Listen that includes pieces by Zosha Di Castri, Tyshawn Sorey, Tomeka Reid, and more.