Features

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.

Claudia Trezza spoke with Peter Benson Miller, curator of Encounters I, about his ideas for the exhibition, which investigates the enduring impact of the city of Rome as a dynamic creative laboratory through a series of interdisciplinary exchanges.

Three leaders in art, architecture, and culture—Julie Mehretu, J. Meejin Yoon, and Adam Weinberg—sat down for an incisive conversation at the American Academy in Rome last month.

The fall conference in Rome, The Academy as a Mirror of Change, explored AAR’s evolution and featured a stellar line-up of speakers celebrating 125 years of art and culture.

View photographs from the 125th Anniversary New York Gala, held at Cipriani in New York on November 6, 2019.

Hundreds of people filled the studios, gardens, and terraces at the American Academy in Rome to witness visual, musical, and literary works created by Rome Prize Fellows, Italian Fellows, and more.

AAR celebrated its fifteenth annual McKim Medal Gala at Villa Aurelia in Rome. Over five hundred guests gathered on June 5 to honor Museum of Modern Art curator Paola Antonelli, along with the award-winning film director and screenwriter Luca Guadagnino, with the McKim Medal for their exceptional contributions to the arts.

Claudia Trezza interviewed the novelist and writer Anthony Doerr, a 2005 Fellow and a 2019 Resident, a few days after his reading at Macro Asilo in Rome.

The human body has gone through a lot since the American Academy in Rome was founded more than a century ago. When the Academy first opened its doors in 1894, the Greek and Roman notion of perfect balance and chiseled beauty was still the standard for study.

To catch a glimpse of the long-lost beliefs of the ancients and their visions of the afterlife, one needs to look at the images of the gods that they painted on their pottery. This was the argument the archeologist Thomas Carpenter made during the 2019 Patricia H. Labalme Friends of the Library Lecture.

AAR presents The Academic Body, an exhibition that spans over a century to tell the changes in the representation of the body in art and society.

Claudia Trezza recaps a recent Academy symposium titled “Water and Culture: A View from Rome.” The event kicked off with a lecture by the architects Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi (both 2019 Residents).

AAR is pleased to announce a new Rome Prize Fellowship this year. The Philip Guston Rome Prize in Visual Arts, established by Musa and Thomas Mayer with a $3 million gift in memory of the artist Philip Guston.

Two 2019 Residents, Giuliana Bruno and Alice Friedman, focused on the subject of surfaces for their Conversations/Conversazioni event earlier this month. Claudia Trezza offers a few thoughts about the discussion.

The American Academy in Rome has announced the winners of the 2019–20 Rome Prize and Italian Fellowships. These highly competitive fellowships support advanced independent work and research in the arts and humanities.