Features

Fellows, Affiliated Fellows, Residents, Trustees, and friends of the American Academy in Rome gathered on Manhattan’s Lower East Side at the Angel Orensanz Foundation for Contemporary Art on Friday, November 22, for the 2013 Cabaret.

Thompson M. Mayes is the winner of the National Endowment for the Arts Rome Prize in Historic Preservation and Conservation and the deputy general counsel in the Law Department at the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Last Monday evening was chilly, but the “Togli il Fermo/Let it go” exhibition received a warm welcome at the AAR Gallery.

Last Monday an audience of over 200 gathered at the Villa Aurelia to hear William A. Bernoudy Architect in Residence, Juhani Pallasmaa, speak about “Voices of Tranquility. Silence in Art and Architecture.”

Ruth Noyes is the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Post-Doctoral Rome Prize winner in Renaissance and Early Modern Studies and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Art History Program at the Department of Art, Architecture and Art History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

It was 1980, Stephen J. Kieran, FAAR’81, FAIA, now principal in the architectural firm KieranTimberlake, had recently been named a Rome Prize winner of the American Academy in Rome.

Dan Visconti is the winner of the Samuel Barber Rome Prize in Musical Composition and a composer based in Arlington, Virginia.

The Arthur and Janet C. Ross Library recently completed its first step toward a more advanced search experience and to initiating a circulation system by launching its new catalog at library.aarome.org.  

Catherine Wagner is the winner of the Abigail Cohen Rome Prize in Design, a Professor in the Department of Art at Mills College, and a Visual Artist who resides in San Francisco.

The American Academy in Rome will restart its summer archaeology program this summer with new courses designed to train students in twenty-first-century skills.

Last Wednesday the American Academy welcomed Professor Rita Volpe and the Sovrintendenza Capitolina ai Beni Culturali to discuss some extraordinary recent discoveries beneath the Baths of Trajan.

In 2010 Academy Director Christopher S. Celenza, FAAR’94, began the “Conversations That Matter” series with the aim of fostering discussions on mainstream issues in the public eye that affect society as whole, both inside and outside academia.

“On behalf of the Board of Trustees and the Presidential Search Committee I am enormously pleased to announce the selection of Mark Robbins, FAAR’97, as the President and CEO-elect of the American Academy in Rome,” said Mary Margaret Jones, FAAR’97, Chairman of the Academy, in a statement released today.

Dan Hurlin is the winner of the Jesse Howard Jr. Rome Prize in Visual Arts, the director of the graduate program in theater and a professor of theater and dance at Sarah Lawrence College, and an artist based in New York.

Patricia Cronin, FAAR’07, was back in Rome this month for the opening of her new exhibition, Machines, Gods and Ghosts, at the Centrale Montemartini Museum on via Ostiense. 

Hamlett Dobbins is the winner of the Jules Guerin Rome Prize in Visual Arts, the Director of the Clough-Hanson Gallery at Rhodes College, and an artist in Memphis, Tennessee.

A new exhibition presented in collaboration with the Depart Foundation and curated by Vincenzo de Bellis opened last Thursday at the Academy. 

Oxford University’s Chichele Professor of Medieval History Christopher Wickham delivered the final lecture of a three-part series entitled “The Origin of Italian City Communes 1050–1150” to eager audiences at the Villa Aurelia last Wednesday.

The Academy community and its friends gathered in the twilight hours of a beautiful autumn evening at the Villa Aurelia to ring in the academic year, introduce new Fellows and present the program of public events to Trustees, Advisors, Friends, and many Roman guests.

Millicent Mercer Johnsen and I became fast friends the minute we met, which was in the fall of 1988, just as I was starting out as the new president of the American Academy in Rome.