Features

On October 26, AAR will present the 2021 New York Gala honoring three individuals—scholar and administrator Mary Schmidt Campbell, writer John Guare, and artist Julie Mehretu—who advance the arts and humanities and exemplify outstanding achievements in the disciplines in which Rome Prize Fellowships, Italian Fellowships, and invited Residences are conferred.

As interim Director, Elizabeth Rodini will head a team of talented scholars, with Marla Stone joining as the new Andrew W. Mellon Humanities Professor and Lindsay Harris as interim Andrew Heiskell Arts Director.

Among the group of fourteen AAR Residents for the upcoming 2021–22 academic year will be the poet Natasha Trethewey, the art historian Dario Gamboni, and the filmmaker Ava DuVernay.

AAR and the University of Michigan Press have just released volume 65 of the Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome.

Margaret L. Laird, an independent scholar whose research focuses on Roman art and archaeology of the imperial period and a 2000 Rome Prize Fellow, has been appointed to a three-year term as editor of the Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome.

This year, the gift of “time and space to think and work” was awarded to thirty-five American and five Italian artists and scholars, who will each receive a stipend, workspace, and room and board at the Academy’s eleven-acre campus in Rome, starting in September 2021.

Leslie Cozzi (2018 Fellow) interviews the artist Tomaso De Luca (2017 Italian Fellow), whose work can be seen in Rome at the Quadriennale d’arte and the MAXXI Bvlgari Prize 2020.

Marla Stone, a professor of modern European history at Occidental College and a 1996 Rome Prize Fellow in Post-Classical Humanistic Studies, has been appointed AAR’s next Andrew W. Mellon Humanities Professor.

AAR is beyond grateful to reopen for yet another season and welcome our new class of Rome Prize winners and Italian Fellows to the Eternal City.

The American Academy in Rome is pleased to announce its slate of Residents for 2021.

The American Academy in Rome remembers the artist and 2005 Fellow Jackie Saccoccio, who died on December 4.

Photographer Carole Raddato has gifted the core of her vast collection—some 30,000 digital images—to the AAR Library to ensure its long-term preservation and continued access to scholars.

The Library of the American Academy in Rome has reopened its doors to scholars.

Sanjaya Thakur, associate professor and chair of the Classics Department at Colorado College, has been appointed director of AAR’s Classical Summer School.

Encounters I and II are part of a year-long series of events commemorating the institution’s 125th anniversary. The exhibitions trace only a few representative examples of the many interdisciplinary encounters fostered by the Academy from 1948 to the present.

This year, fellowships were awarded to twenty-two North American and two Italian artists and scholars, who will each receive a stipend, workspace, and room and board for a period of five to seven months at the Academy’s eleven-acre campus in Rome.

In the midst of a global pandemic that has disproportionately affected communities of color, racially motivated violence is a reminder that systemic racism still persists.

Since 1894, the Academy has been a nurturing home to a vibrant community of hundreds of distinguished scholars and artists. In this issue, we celebrate AAR’s 125th anniversary by looking back at some of the Fellows and their work.

A video installation by the preservationist Matthew Brennan and the designer Eugenia Morpurgo, on view during Cinque Mostre 2020 earlier this year, featured a condensed version of their vision of a landscape after 2,100 years of climate change.

In celebration of the Academy’s 125th anniversary, the exhibitions Encounters I: Abstracting Rome and Encounters II: The Activist Gesture investigate the enduring impact of the city of Rome as a dynamic creative laboratory through a series of interdisciplinary exchanges.

Encounters I identifies the abstracting techniques resulting from three historic encounters; the second part traces how those techniques are employed in recent contemporary works responding to pressing social and political issues in the United States.

Pairing the artist Julie Mehretu and the architect J. Meejin Yoon, Encounters II explores the role of abstract forms and gestural mark making as indices and agents of social and political change in contemporary American society.

Nancy Millar O’Boyle, a member of the American Academy in Rome’s Board of Trustees from 1985 to 2011, died on March 25, 2020. She was one week shy of her 89th birthday.

In consideration of the safety of those residing in Rome and the institution as a whole, we have made the difficult decision to close the Academy’s campus on April 3.

The modernist architect Henry N. Cobb, an AAR Trustee Emeritus and a 1992 Resident, has died. He was 93 years old.

Hundreds of people filled AAR’s courtyard, cryptoporticus, library, and galleries to view artists and performers showcase their work and explore this year’s theme, “Convergence.”

The historian and educator Avinoam Shalem (2016 Resident) has been appointed the 24th Director of the American Academy in Rome.

Convergence is the theme of the 2020 edition of Cinque Mostre, AAR’s annual collective exhibition featuring work by current Rome Prize Fellows, Italian and Affiliated Fellows, and invited artists.

Political philosopher Danielle Allen and visual artist Theaster Gates picked up on this year’s Academy theme, “Encounters,” to delve into a conversation on democracy, art, and social activism.

Michael Sovern, a law professor and former president of Columbia University who chaired the Academy’s Board of Trustees from 1994 to 2005, died on January 20. He was 88 years old.