Far Afield

In a fantastic New York Times profile of Arthur Simms (2003 Fellow), the writer Yinka Elujoba states that the artist’s experiments with light and shadow were inspired in part by the Caravaggio paintings he saw during his Rome Prize Fellowship.

Curator Jessica Powers turned her research as a 2018 Affiliated Fellow into Roman Landscapes: Visions of Nature and Myth from Rome and Pompeii, on view at the San Antonio Museum of Art through May 21. The richly illustrated catalogue has essays from Powers, Bettina Bergmann (1982 Fellow), Verity Platt, and more.

Marla Stone (1996 Fellow), our Andrew W. Mellon Humanities Professor, and Ruth Ben-Ghiat (2022 Resident), talked to NPR about why Italy has kept its Fascist monuments.

Elizabeth G. Elmi, our current Rome Prize Fellow in Renaissance and early modern studies, will begin a new job upon her return  as assistant professor in musicology at Williams College.

Anthony Grafton (2004 Resident) wrote a new book with Maren Elizabeth Schwab. The Art of Discovery: Digging into the Past in Renaissance Europe is a panoramic history of the antiquarians whose discoveries transformed Renaissance culture and gave rise to new forms of art and knowledge.

The Academy is deeply saddened by the loss of the graphic designer and teacher Carin Goldberg (2015 Fellow). Her friendship and influence was widespread, as attested by the remembrances of her friends and colleagues, which Print Magazine has kindly gathered.

Jack Massey (1961 Fellow, 1979 Resident), an artist and longtime Rhode Island School of Design professor, has died at the age of 97. In the decade before his three-year Rome Prize Fellowship, Massey fought in the Battle of the Bulge under General Patton toward the end of WWII.

In the New York Times, Dana Spiotta (2009 Fellow) assesses the continuing relevance of White Noise by Don DeLillo (2018 Resident), a novel from 1985 exploring death, the fear of death, and the modern condition.

Lars Lerup, a 2010 Rome Prize Fellow in architecture, offers personal reflections through his work in a new book, The Life and Death of Objects: Autobiography of a Design Project.

Composer and engineer Tina Tallon (2022 Fellow) discusses algorithmic justice—how biases embedded in technology and artificial intelligence can be recognized and challenged—with the University of Florida’s WUFT.

Lamia Balafrej, our current Rome Prize Fellow in medieval studies, offers a fresh perspective on slavery and automation by looking at images in Ibn al-Razzaz al-Jazari’s Arabic compendium of the mechanical arts (ca. 1200) in this open-access article.

Philip Pearlstein, a painter of “hard realism” and a Resident at the American Academy in Rome in 1982, has died. He was 98 years old.

Thomas J. Campanella, a 2011 Rome Prize Fellow in design, contributes an op-ed in the New York Times on how a rapid decline of ash trees in North America has affected basket makers.

In his new book Uncommon Wrath, Josiah Osgood (2002 Fellow) chronicles how the political rivalry between Julius Caesar and Marcus Cato precipitated the end of the Roman Republic.

“Colonial cities are too often thought to be the products of the singular visions and needs of the colonial regimes that founded them,” writes 2023 Rome Prize winner Preeti Chopra for the Wisconsin State Journal. “My work is a corrective to that distortion.”

A new book of poems by Matt Donovan (2012 Fellow), titled The Dug-Up Gun Museum and published by BOA Editions, explores America’s fascination with guns.

Work produced by Mary Ellen Carroll (2022 Fellow) during her time in Rome, gathered under the title THEIR TABLE IS TOO LONG (IL LORO TAVOLO È TROPPO LUNGO), is on view at Galerie Hubert Winter in Vienna through December 10.

Barbara Chase-Riboud talks to the New York Times Style Magazine in advance of two retrospective exhibitions, at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in Saint Louis and the Serpentine Galleries in London.

Eleanor Esser Gorski, a 2003 Rome Prize Fellow in historic preservation and conservation, has been appointed the new chief executive of the Chicago Architecture Center.

Adele Chatfield-Taylor, the Academy’s former president and a 1984 Rome Prize Fellow, will receive the Albert Simons Medal of Excellence from the College of Charleston at a ceremony on October 27. The award recognizes individuals who have excelled in civic design, architectural design, historic preservation, and urban planning.

The first museum survey of work by 2018 Fellow Abigail DeVille opens tonight at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. The exhibition “examines the myths and realities of local, familial and ancestral histories and the convoluted notion of freedom in a country fraught with oppression and racism.”

Our 2022 Italian Fellow Valerio Morabito is speaking twice at Thomas Jefferson University in conjunction with his exhibition there this month: an October 14 roundtable on “Gardens in the City” and an October 24 lecture on “Re-Imagining American Cities: Moving Forward.”

Van Doren Waxter in New York is presenting a solo exhibition of work by the late Jackie Saccoccio (2005 Fellow). The exhibition, called Tempestuous and comprising art made during the last two years of her life, is on view until October 29.

Tung-Hui Hu, our current Rome Prize Fellow in literature, offers an alternative to doomscrolling in his new book from MIT Press. Digital Lethargy explores the exhaustion, disappointment, and listlessness of our online lives through works by contemporary artists, writers, and performers.

The Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper Hewitt recognized Nader Tehrani, founding principal of NADAAA and a 2018 Resident, as a “Design Visionary” with a 2022 National Design Award.

Ivester Contemporary in Austin, Texas, has just opened Foreign Body, an exhibition of sculptures by 2021 Fellow Steve Parker—several of them made during his time in Rome.

Oxford University Press has just published Building the Classical World: Bauforschung as a Contemporary Approach, a book of essays that was edited by Elisha Ann Dumser and Dorian Borbonus (2017 Fellow).

Phu Hoang, 2017 Rome Prize Fellow and current Society of Fellows president, has been appointed section head of architecture in the Knowlton School at Ohio State University.

The publishing house Fuorilinea has just released 2022 Resident Natasha Trethewey’s poetry collection Domestic Work (2000) as Lavori domestici, translated by Katie Scroccaro. The book is part of Caravelle, a series dedicated to contemporary American poets.

Territory is the title for Houghton University’s exhibition of work by 1985 Fellow Nick Blosser, on view September 2–October 9. The Tennessee-based artist is a landscape painter in the tradition of Charles Burchfield and Albert Pinkham Ryder.