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. This year, Rome Prizes were awarded to thirty American and six Italian artists and scholars, who will each receive a stipend, workspace, and room and board for a period of five to eleven months at the Academy’s eleven-acre campus in Rome. The winners of the Rome Prize and Italian Fellowships were presented on April 9, 2019, during the Arthur and Janet C. Ross Rome Prize Ceremony in the Great Hall at Cooper Union in New York.
The Academy is pleased to award two new Fellowships this year. The first is the Philip Guston Rome Prize in Visual Arts, established by Musa and Thomas Mayer in memory of the artist Philip Guston. This Fellowship further marks Guston’s long-standing relationship with the Academy and the city of Rome, as a Fellow (1949), Resident (1971), and Trustee (1969–76). AAR will also award the inaugural Adele Chatfield-Taylor Rome Prize in Historic Preservation. This Fellowship recognizes the indelible influence and impact that Chatfield-Taylor has had on both her discipline and our institution.
After an introduction by Cary Davis, Chair of the Board of Trustees, the winners of the 2019–20 Rome Prize and Italian Fellowships were presented by Mark Robbins, the Academy’s President and CEO (1997 Fellow). The ceremony also featured a dialogue between AAR Director John Ochsendorf (2008 Fellow) and Melissa Lane, Professor of Politics and Director of the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University (2018 Resident), about “Integrity and Public Office: Classical Greek and Roman Perspectives.” The discussion was part of the programming series Conversations/Conversazioni: From the American Academy in Rome, sponsored by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation.
Rome Prize winners are selected annually by independent juries of distinguished artists and scholars through a national competition. The eleven disciplines supported by the Academy are: Literature, Music Composition, Visual Arts, Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Design, and Historic Preservation and Conservation, as well as Ancient Studies, Medieval Studies, Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, and Modern Italian Studies. Nationwide, 982 applications were received from 42 US states plus Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Washington, DC. The ages of the winners range from 28 to 68.
In addition to the Rome Prize winners, the Academy announced the recipients of six Italian Fellowships, through which Italian artists and scholars live and work in the Academy community, pursuing their own projects in a collaborative, interdisciplinary environment with their American counterparts. The Italian Fellows are also selected through a national jury process.
A full list of the 2019–20 Rome Prize winners and Italian Fellows, as well as the names and institutional affiliations of the jurors, can be downloaded as a PDF.
American Academy in Rome
Founded in 1894, the American Academy in Rome is the oldest American overseas center for independent study and advanced research in the arts and humanities. It is the only privately funded not-for-profit institution among the national academies in Rome. In addition to the Rome Prize and Italian Fellowships, the Academy invites a select group of Residents, Affiliated Fellows, and Visiting Artists and Scholars to work together within this exceptional community. To learn more about the American Academy in Rome, please visit aarome.org.
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