The mission of the American Academy in Rome, founded in 1894, is to foster the pursuit of advanced research and independent study in the fine arts and humanities.


The Academy awards the Rome Prize to a select group of artists and scholars invited to Rome to pursue their creative goals in an atmosphere conducive to artistic innovation and rigorous scholarship.


Over the years, the Academy paid tribute to Beaux Arts ideologies and fostered collaborative relationships which became the legacy of Rome Prize Fellows. Today, the Academy remains a dynamic, inspirational cultural site, a unique intellectual community involved in a complex and changing network of individuals and institutions.

The Academy provides a multi-disciplinary environment where groups of talented and ambitious artists and scholars come together, influence each other, and contribute to the artistic movements and scholarly culture of their time. Central to its mission are encounters with the Eternal City, deepening and intensifying all the Academy has to offer.



































































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Rome Prize Fellows and Projects

To view past Rome Prize fellows, click here.


Arts

Architecture

Matthew Hural
Arnold W. Brunner Rome Prize

Lecturer, Department of Architecture, University of Virginia; Designer, Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects

Between Inside and Out. Aurelian Gates
Using the circumlocution of the walk, the axial view of the perspective, the interconnected meanings of the fragment, and the techniques of hybrid drawing and the collage, this project seeks to define a construction that builds upon the cleared spaces and extant constructions at the former locations of the Aurelian gates. By understanding the wall as a circumambulatory founding of a city through drawing, and the gates as the pivot points for a series of topographical transects, I will investigate the contingent place wherein both external and internal begin. At the end of my stay, interventions within the city, viewing apparatuses that celebrate the conditional awareness of both nomad and urban dweller, will be designed and implemented as an exhibit.

Ursula Emery McClure and Michael A. McClure
Gorham P. Stevens Rome Prize

Principals, emerymcclure architecture

Terra Viscus: Hybrid Tectonic Precedent.
For 8 years we have been research practicing in Southern Louisiana, an environment we define as the terra viscus. The terra viscus is a super-saturated condition, never completely solid or liquid. It consists of geological, economical, cultural, and ecological conditions that interweave and overlap. This physical description of our present site also serves as our analytical methodology. The terra viscus condition allows us to vivify, to analyze, and to create relevant building strategies in the phenomenal identity that is Southern Louisiana. Ancient Rome's ability to focus on communicative tectonics over pragmatic safety offers unique counter-lessons to the Gulf Coast's current fixation of solely pragmatic solutions.We propose to apply the analytical methodology of terra viscus to Rome focusing on its hydro-tectonic development. The end product will be a pamphlet of graphic, written, and design proposal studies: a continuation and (post) precedent study for our existing research, terra viscus.

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Design

Cathy Lang Ho
Katherine Edwards Gordon Rome Prize

Independent Writer and Editor

Broadband Architecture: A study of how new media outlets are challenging the authority of print publications
Design websites are proliferating, challenging the authority of print publications and diversifying the coverage of the design fields. Like the independent little magazines of the 1960s and 1970s that so enlivened architectural discourse, many of today's web 'zines and blogs offer immediate and impassioned perspectives that are engaging new categories of readers. But while the Internet is expanding the conversation about architecture and design, the question remains, is it improving it? I propose to study how new media architecture "channels" are shaping the way the design fields are communicated and understood.

David Erdman
Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Rome Prize

Department of Architecture and Urban Design University of California, Los Angeles
Principal, davidclovers

Plasticity Now
Plasticity is often understood as a contemporary interest because of its material associations. This proposal suggests that this is a misconception and that plasticity is a spatial and architectural idea that preceded the material invention. The research investigates effects of plasticity in Baroque and Postwar period buildings in Rome by focusing on three aspects of plasticity - superficiality, spatial volume and illumination. The research takes two trajectories: the first focuses on the poche as a material substance that facilitates interiorized plasticity within a dense urban environment; the second focuses on surface transitions that mediate between distinct spatial geometries. The challenge of this proposal is two-fold: first, the need for innovative techniques through which plasticity can be documented and represented; second, the desire to draw relationships between spatial plasticity and contemporary interest in material plasticity. Both challenges are opportunities to understand how the buildings of Rome inform contemporary architectural ideas.

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Historic Preservation and Conservation

Andrew J. Kranis
National Endowment for the Arts Rome Prize

Decor Project Manager, Whole Foods Market

Green Piazza: Community Ecology in the City
What if the piazze and civic spaces of Rome - the "white space" of Nolli's Pianta Grande - were also the very source of the community's fresh water, the sites where its waste was turned to nourishment for plants and trees, and the silent generator of its electrical power? Sharing resources for water, energy, and even food production at the local level was the basis upon which pre-imperial Rome was formed; it may also be the most intelligent means of developing and preserving the city without placing undue strain on its centuries-old infrastructure. I will re-imagine the Roman piazza and water fountain as the poetic and functional heart of an "off-the-grid" neighborhood, using green design to express a sense of community, both local and global. Rome's open spaces have always celebrated the complex, unpredictable choreography of urban life - they may attain still deeper meaning as the loci of sustainable, decentralized community ecosystems.

Rosa Lowinger
Booth Family Rome Prize

Conservator of Sculpture and Architecture, Los Angeles, CA

Art Vandalism: A Comprehensive Study of its Causes and Effects, With an Emphasis on Conservation of Contemporary Public Art
My proposal for the Rome Prize is to examine the causes and effects of art vandalism from a number of different perspectives — historical, sociological, political, and technical — in order to create a theoretical model that would inform the conservation of contemporary public art.

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Landscape Architecture

Christopher Counts
Prince Charitable Trusts Rome Prize

Senior Associate, Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates Inc., Landscape Architects

Painting and Drawing as a Means to Study the Spatial Registration, Appropriated Use, and Movement of Masterpieces of the Italian Urban Landscape
I propose to study Italian urban landscape masterpieces through drawing and painting. These studies will explore basic principles of composition, scale, and proportion with a particular emphasis on the spatiality of landscape, movement, and experience. As ordinary as this might seem to some, it remains the essence of what landscape architects do, whether in the year 2010 or 1650. Despite my own accomplishments with digital representation, I remain fundamentally interested in timeless questions, such as: What are the effects of movement and use on landscape spatiality and how does the form and material of interstitial space influence experience and social behavior? My work would focus on traditional en plein air drawings that would be expanded within studio and would include works on paper and canvas created through various media.

Hope H. Hasbrouck
Garden Club of America Rome Prize

Assistant Professor, School of Architecture, The University of Texas at Austin

Interpreting Cultural Territories Through Prospect and Passage
This study seeks to inventory the devices of interpretation for the reading of cultural sites and territories. In making this inventory I intend to reveal the form making and management criteria that determine the assembly of prospect and passage in archeological sites and their cultural landscapes, as that assembly relates to the fostering of historical imagination and the experience of place. My interpretative inventory will focus on about four large cultural-archeological sites within the urban, middle, and rural landscapes surrounding Rome. It is Rome's — enumerable historic strata in which multiple periods of occupation are revealed and interpreted through scholarship that make Rome ideal for this investigation. It is through the lens of design practice that the inventory — and all the prospects and passages in the sites — at a range of scales from site based material to urban design and regional planning, will target the devices of design that affect the individual or private spatial experience.

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Literature

Brad Kessler
John Guare Writer's Fund Rome Prize, a gift of Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman

Writer

Editing The Goat Diaries and starting a new novel
One of the themes in this new book is the ancient tradition of the transhumance — walking animals to high pasture in the summer and back to low lands in winter. As it happens, transhumance — transumanza &emdash; is still widely practiced in the Apennines and the Italian Alps. Being in Rome would offer me the wonderful possibility of reseaching Italy's transhumance and its attendant "shepherd's roads." My Goat Diaries draws inspiration from the pastoral poem, which also happens to have its birth in Italy: first with Theocritus' Sicilian shepherds and later with Virgil's Eclogues. All these confluences greatly excite me. This year in Rome will give me time to complete The Goat Diaries and possibly start work on a series of novellas.

Dana Spiotta
Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize, a gift of the Drue Heinz Trust/American Academy of Arts and Letters

Writer

Unnamed Novel
I don't work at a university, so I don't interact much with people from other disciplines. This year at the Academy in Rome will be an exciting opportunity to broaden my interests and writerly obsessions. I am a research-intensive fiction writer; the resources of the Academy will not be lost on me. I will be a full participant in the life of the Academy. Leaving the United States for a time will be great for my writing at this point in my life. I am well into my third novel. I know how to work. I need to keep pushing hard against the familiar and the easy. Every writer needs what James Joyce described as "silence, exile, and cunning". As a writer with (so far) distinctly American subjects, exile will serve me well, allowing me some distance at which to contemplate the culture that has preoccupied my work. My writing will also benefit from the personal distance the Academy would offer. I will be able to concentrate more deeply on my novel. This year in Rome will give me both community and exile — a unique and wonderful situation for me.

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Musical Composition

Keeril Makan
Luciano Berio Rome Prize

Assistant Professor of Music, Music and Theater Arts Section, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Three new works: Hover for electric guitar and orchestra; a trio for flute, viola, and harp; and Tracker, a chamber opera
The work that I propose to create while at the American Academy in Rome will be a large-scale chamber opera. This work questions the assumption that if systems of nature can be technologically replicated the result will be positive universal progress, independent of the cultural and political climate in which the technology was conceived. The unexpected impact (both positive and negative) of technology's actual relationship to contemporary society is the focus of this work.

Kurt Rohde
Elliott Carter Rome Prize

Assistant Professor, Composition/Theory, Department of Music, University of California, Davis; Co-director, The Empyrean Ensemble; Artistic Director, The Left Coast Chamber Ensemble

Composition of Two New Works: A Violin Concertino for violinist Axel Strauss, and a puppet opera entitled A Shadow Opera
During my time at the American Academy in Rome, I plan to compose two new works: 1. A Violin Concertino for violinist Axel Strauss. 2. A puppet opera entitled A Shadow Opera for Adorno Ensemble, with librettist Robert Glick, choreographer Alison Salzinger, bass clarinetist Laura Carmichael, and percussionist Chris Froh.

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Visual Arts

Hisham M. Bizri
John Armstrong Chaloner/Jacob H. Lazarus-Metropolitan Museum of Art Rome Prize

Filmmaker and Assistant Professor of Film, Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota

Screenplay: The Last Day of Summer
The Last Day of Summer is the story of one man's obsessive pursuit of his alienated wife and his equally passionate search for a son he once, but only briefly, knew. On another level, the script powerfully dramatizes, in a single day, the experience of exile of the people of today's Beirut. The drama unfolds when Yacoub, a Lebanese Jew, who has seen his riches decline, is forced to leave his house, having learned that his wife Helene plans to bring another man into their bed later that day. Yacoub and Helene, a Italian opera singer, have not had sexual contact since their son died at the age of 11 a decade ago. Yacoub starts his days' work in the bustling city. He is the financial columnist in the local newspaper and comes into contact with people from all walks of life. He is forced to hear improprieties about his wife and is tormented by other men who use him as an outlet for their own frustrations and violence against minorities. Yacoub wanders the streets of Beirut in search of compassion but the shock of religious, political, and material disillusion impairs his inner wholeness. There is an undertone of despair as his day progresses. The film chronicles his nightmarish journey in a city where dwellers no longer closely recognize each other. Yacoub finds salvation when he encounters Yusuf, a young Muslim poet who has been to Rome for study. Yacoub and Yusuf are a father and a son in a spiritual search of one another and their encounter radically alters the course of Yacoub's life. Yacoub undergoes many trials and tribulations before returning to his home together with Yusuf. His own actively re-interpreted reality is most triumphant in a climatic scene in which Helene accepts and affirms who she is as a woman, Yacoub as a man, and Yusuf as a poet. The lost and captive city is redeemed through the power of love.

David Humphrey
Harold M. English Rome Prize

Artist and Instructor, School of Art, Yale University

Blind Handshake
I am interested in the way modes of depiction bear the idiosyncratic marks of historic circumstance and individual sensibility while performing their picture labors. My enthusiasms range from Roman and early Christian mosaics to Renaissance painting and Italian art of the nineteen twenties and thirties. My paintings and sculpture usually respond to what I call the rhetorical solicitations of a source, whereby my work acts out a skewed response to what I imagine the work "wants". I plan to make new artworks developed from observational drawings of selected historic artworks in Rome. I will also be finishing a book I'm doing with Periscope Publishing called Blind Handshake, which is an attempt to flush out, from both sides of the artist/critic relation, a variety of rhetorical strategies while celebrating those idiosyncratic personal and historic traces.

Marie Lorenz
Joseph H. Hazen Rome Prize

Artist, Brooklyn, NY

Tiber River Navigation
I want to make a series of artworks and interventions that focus on the Tiber River in Rome. Throughout the year, I will make drawings and woodblock carvings that explore the history of the river and its relationship to the city. More specifically; how it has transformed the city as a conduit of information, how it endured as a site of ritual and myth, and how it exists now as an 'edge zone'. I will conclude the project by making a boat and traveling from Rome to the sea.

Matthew Monteith
Abigail Cohen Rome Prize

Artist/Photographer, Brooklyn, NY

Living City, Living Art
My interest in the American Academy of Rome derives from the premise that all artists benefit from an awareness of history. Making work at the American Academy would give me a unique opportunity to study art across the disciplines in a manner that would immediately impact my work. My year at the American Academy would be spent making photographs informed by the wealth of art surrounding me in Rome using the backdrop of the American Academy to investigate how institutions have influenced art making over time and how perceptions of art and history shift. I intend to make images of scholars, artists, conservators, institutions and street scenes of daily Roman life alongside tourists coming in direct contact with many of the most influential works of art ever created.

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Humanities

Ancient Studies

Scott Craver
Emeline Hill Richardson/Samuel H. Kress Foundation Pre-Doctoral Rome Prize (year one of a two-year fellowship)

McIntire Department of Art, University of Virginia

Patterns of Complexity: An Index and Analysis of Urban Property Investment at Pompei
Using evidence from the physical remains of the city as well as from excavation archives, scholarly publications, and ancient legal texts, the project, which comprises my doctoral dissertation, is the first to index, quantify, and analyze urban property investment at Pompeii on a city-wide scale. It is simultaneously investigating the related phenomenon of complexity, a term here used to characterize the increasing regularization and interrelatedness in the built environment of Pompeii. The central question under investigation is: Was urban property investment at Pompeii a side-lined, opportunistic endeavor bound-up with subordinate social relationships, or was it a primary, strategic economic concern, and if so, to whom?

Susan A. Curry
Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Pre-Doctoral Rome Prize

Department of Classical Studies, Indiana University

Human Identities and Animal Others in the Second Century CE
Latin and Greek texts, relief sculptures, and mosaics from the 2nd c. CE are rich in images of animals that are both reflections of actual human encounters with non-human animals and projections of what humans thought about animals. My dissertation explores the variety of ways in which human animals in the 2nd c. CE conceptualized non-human animals. When one begins to explore this discourse about animals, questions concerning what it means to be human inevitably emerge. The animal is often the "other" against which human identity is posited. When one assigns another human being to the category of "animal," s/he often places that individual outside the scope of ethical consideration. Ultimately, I hope this dissertation will show that the field of Classical Studies has much to contribute to the history of human/animal relationships and to on-going investigations into how and why we construct boundaries between humans and other animals.

John North Hopkins
Frances Barker Tracy/Samuel H. Kress Foundation/ Helen M. Woodruff Fellowship of the Archaeological Institute of America Pre-Doctoral Rome Prize (year two of a two-year fellowship)

Department of Art and Art History, The University of Texas at Austin

The Topographical Transformation of Archaic Rome: A New Interpretation of Architecture and Geography in the Early City
Between the mid-seventh and early-fifth centuries B.C. Romans created the vast central plain that would become the Forum Romanum; they founded the first roads, drainage systems and most enduring temples in their city's history; they altered Rome's very geography and began employing enduring tectonics, effectively setting the foundations and the standard for the city's subsequent building programs. My project will be to complete my dissertation, in which I assemble archeological and literary evidence for this topographical transformation and consider why at this time Romans wanted and were able to so transform their city.

Patricia Larash
Andrew Heiskell Post-Doctoral Rome Prize

Assistant Professor, Department of Classical Studies, Boston University

Martial's Readers, Rome's Audiences
My monograph, Martial's Readers, Rome's Audiences, examines Martial's use of figures for audiences in the epigrams. Martial's abstract concept of the general reader is shaped by concrete topographical and social functions of the city of Rome. While at the Academy, I plan to finish existing chapters on public entertainment, epigrams "in the wild" (e.g., graffiti), Saturnalia, and women readers, especially with a view to topographical context. I also plan to complete a chapter on Martial's use of epitaphs as a model for his reading and the ways in which they suggest strategies to Martial for the challenges facing an author who wants to address an anonymous general public. To do this, I would like to be able to walk among extant monuments, both in situ and in museums, and emulate the experience of the average, anonymous Roman passer-by confronted by tombstones competing for his or her attention.

Matthew Notarian
Arthur Ross Pre-Doctoral Rome Prize

Department of Classics, University at Buffalo

Civic Transformation in Early Imperial Latium: An Archaeological and Social History of Praeneste, Tibur and Tusculum
This project is a comprehensive account of the development of three urban communities in Latium Vetus, Praeneste (modern Palestrina), Tibur (Tivoli) and Tusculum, between the 2nd century BC and the 2nd century AD. Using a combination of archaeological, historical and epigraphical evidence, I will investigate the continuity and adaptation of communities at the fringe of the Roman suburbium. Examinations of these outer towns have been neglected in consideration of the social and economic system of Rome's hinterland. This study is innovative because it approaches them collectively as functional communities, considering their social, economic and political qualities, as well as their association with the city of Rome and its suburbium. By examining the relationship between material culture in the towns and their territories and the social history of these communities, this study will demonstrate how suburban civic life survived and adapted to the political and economic system of the imperial era.

Hérica Valladares
National Endowment for the Humanities/Andrew Heiskell Post-Doctoral Rome Prize

Assistant Professor, Department of Classics, Johns Hopkins University

On Tenderness: The Semantics of Love in Roman Painting and Poetry
My book analyzes representations of tender love in Roman wall painting and Latin poetry between the late first century B.C.E. (ca. 30s B.C.E.) and the mid-first century C.E. (ca. 60s C.E.). More specifically, it investigates depictions of lovers that evoke affection and desire, yet stop short of representing the sexual act. A close study of Latin elegiac poetry of the early Augustan age is central to my analysis of these painted love scenes. Through close consideration of the dialogue between media, I delineate a symbolic vocabulary, or semantics of love, through which Romans imagined, visualized and communicated amorous feeling. In Roman amatory representations, tenderness is both a subject and a mode that inflects images and texts, turning sex into romance. By situating the development of a Roman semantics of love in a broader historical context, I offer new insights into individual works of art and literature and on a much-overlooked facet of early imperial culture.

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Medieval Studies

Carrie Beneš
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Post-Doctoral Rome Prize

Assistant Professor of Medieval and Renaissance History, New College of Florida

SPQR Transformed: Post-Classical Fortunes of a Classical Acronym
Completion of a book manuscript exploring the diverse uses and interpretations of the SPQR acronym in the politics, ideology, and iconography of medieval and early modern Italy (c. 600-1600). In the classical period, SPQR was a conventional abbreviation for the formulaic senatus populusque Romanus, referring to the Roman state; by contrast, its contemporary incarnation as Rome's municipal coat of arms - gold lettering on scarlet - is chiefly a visual, civic symbol. This shift of both form and meaning took place in the Middle Ages, during which the acronym in various forms was used in turn to support imperial, populist, oligarchic, and papal sovereignties over the city. My project on the post-classical afterlife of one of the world's most famous acronyms will reveal not only the important role played by Roman history in medieval and early modern culture, but also the dense semiotic webs within which that exchange took place.

Erik Gustafson
Samuel H. Kress Foundation Pre-Doctoral Rome Prize (year two of a two-year fellowship)

Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

Tradition and Renewal in the Thirteenth-Century Franciscan Architecture of Tuscany
My project deals with the "origins" of 13th-century Franciscan architecture in Tuscany, looking to two 11th-century Gregorian Reform monastic orders - the Vallombrosans and Camaldolese - as spiritual and architectural models. My hypothesis is that the Franciscan movement is a renewal of the earlier Gregorian monastic spiritual ideals, expanding and adjusting the spiritual aims of 'caring for souls' and service to the community to fit a new range of devotional and cultural needs. While previous scholarship has seen Franciscan architecture as simplistic, vernacular halls for preaching, I argue that the friars' churches are better understood as spaces designed to both house and express the devotional practices of the friars and of the laity.

Annie Montgomery Labatt
Phyllis G. Gordan/Samuel H. Kress Foundation Pre-Doctoral Rome Prize (year one of a two-year fellowship)

History of Art, Yale University

In Search of the "Eastern" Image: Sacred Painting in Eighth and Ninth Century Rome
Specific images and types in medieval Roman imagery express meanings that do not fit into the traditional academic divide between East and West. Some types - such as the Transfiguration, the Deesis, and the Anastasis - appear to stand out amidst Roman imagery as belonging to the so-called "Byzantine" tradition because these forms became notable parts of a canonized Eastern tradition at a later date. But in the eighth and ninth century these forms did not necessarily connote division or difference. Rather, these medieval images reveal inventiveness, experimentation, and hybridity. Some images in Rome called attention to "Greeks" as different, and some images belonged to a more generalizing Roman idiom. By studying the way specific examples of iconographical types functioned in specific Roman churches, this project will be an attempt to clarify what role the East did or did not play in the imagery of early medieval Rome.

John Parker
National Endowment for the Humanities/Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Post-Doctoral Rome Prize

Associate Professor, Department of English, Macalester College

Drama and the Death of God, or The Gospel of Seneca
This project crosses two related boundaries in the history of theater: the one between classical and Christian culture, the other between late medieval and Renaissance drama. I want to ease both divisions by stressing the common ground between Christianity and Seneca. When Renaissance dramatists claimed to revive antiquity by way of his drama, they did not return to that drama as something opposed or alterior to Christian revelation. The gospels, the liturgy, and the acts of the martyrs (the project's first half will show) had been as much a product of, and meditation on, pagan violence as was his drama. Seneca thus served (the second half will argue) as an ironic preservative of drama's medieval heritage at a moment in England when Protestant forces worked hard to extirpate Catholic "paganism" by suppressing the Latin liturgy and the vernacular plays that took the gospels and saints lives as their chief models.

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Modern Italian Studies

Margaret Fisher
Paul Mellon Post-Doctoral Rome Prize

Video Director and Publisher, Second Evening Art / BMI

Through the eyes of children: a re-assessment of the role of futurism in the development of early Italian Radio under Fascism
Italian futurists who broadcast and theorized about radio from 1929 to 1941 are often credited with an historic role in shaping the style and character of early Italian Radio. Children's programs offer a stunning view of the progressive agenda of early Italian Radio before futurist involvement with broadcasting, and an excellent vantage point from which to open new lines of inquiry into futurist radio activity and writing. To establish the condition of Italian Radio before the futurists, I will examine Italian Radio's pioneering phase (1925-1928) which partnered children with technology. I will compile a data base of broadcast activities and texts related to both groups, children and futurists, and publish a bi-lingual sourcebook of previously unavailable texts and scripts. With this foundation in place, I will continue with a critical overview and essays on special topics: child protagonists in futurist radio dramas; government policy and futurism; the global vision of early Italian Radio as one prototype for the Internet; and a survey of the embrace of futurism by early Italian Radio to the present day.

Gregory Tentler
Donald and Maria Cox Pre-Doctoral Rome Prize

History of Art, University of Pennsylvania

Made in Italy: Piero Manzoni and the Birth of the International Avant-Garde 1954-1963
In the nearly half century since his death, the Italian artist Piero Manzoni (1933-1963) has become a key figure in the postwar revival of Marcel Duchamp and one of the principle antecedents of the international movements of Body Art and Conceptual Art. This characterization, however, examines Manzoni's art only through the concerns of wider tendencies of postwar art and ignores the cultural genesis of his work in Milan and Rome. As a consequence, Manzoni is presented as a fragmented and often contradictory figure. My dissertation seeks to correct this portrayal and situate Manzoni's work in the context of postwar Italy, rather than solely in a European milieu. Doing so reveals that the artist's immense contributions to postwar art were equally indebted to his dialog with an Italian tradition of Modernism, which has been neglected in broader surveys of the avant-garde.

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Renaissance and Early Modern Studies

Eric Bianchi
Marian and Andrew Heiskell Pre-Doctoral Rome Prize

Department of Music, Yale University

Center of the World: Athanasius Kircher at the Jesuit Colleges of Rome
Athanasius Kircher's Musurgia universalis (Rome, 1650) was the largest, most influential music treatise of the seventeenth century. Kircher was a Jesuit polymath who spent nearly 50 years as a professor at the Collegio Romano. This project examines Musurgia as a document of intellectual history, and reconstructs the larger scholarly context from which it arose. In Rome, I will consult the principal holdings of Jesuit materials: the Archivio della Pontificia Universita Gregoriana, and Fondo Gesuitico of the Bibliotheca Nazionale, where Kircher's manuscripts and correspondence are preserved, as well as the Archivium Romanum Societatis Iesu, which holds censors' files and other important administrative materials. In addition to Jesuit archives, I will also consult the papers and published writings of Kircher's colleagues and adversaries, such as Leone Allacci and Melchior Inchofer, in smaller archives throughout the city.

Elizabeth McCahill
Millicent Mercer Johnsen Post-Doctoral Rome Prize

Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of the South

Reinventing Rome: 1400-1450
My project is a study of the papal Curia and the impoverished city to which it returned in 1420. It will begin by exploring some of the internal dynamics of the Curia with special attention to the efforts of classicizing scholars, or humanists, to carve out a distinctive niche for themselves in the agonistic atmosphere of the papal court. Drawing on archival documents and humanist social commentary, it will then offer a precis of the social and economic concerns of Rome's unruly populace. Finally, the various players will be brought together, if not in harmony then in creative cacophony, as they sought to turn the city into something more than her dingy early Quattrocento self. The book will thus illuminate an urban environment in transition and parse the ways in which curialists and Roman citizens collaborated and competed to develop the city's ancient legacy into a potent cultural myth.

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Residents


Claude Baker
Paul Fromm Composer in Residence
Professor of Music
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN
 September - December

Elizabeth Bartman, FAAR'83
James S. Ackerman Scholar in Residence
First Vice President, Archaeological Institute of America
Archaeological Institute of America's New York Society
New York, NY
 September - December

Carroll Dunham
Roy Lichtenstein Artists in Residence
Visual Artist
New York, NY
 October - December

George Hargreaves
Mercedes T. and Sid R. Bass Landscape Architect in Residence
Design Director/Senior Principal
Hargreaves Associates
San Francisco, CA
 January - March

Daniel P. Jordan
James Marston Fitch Resident in Historic Preservation
President
Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc.
Charlottesville, VA
 February - March

Helen Nagy, FAAR'86
Lucy Shoe Meritt Scholar in Residence
Professor of Ancient Art and Architecture, Department of Classics
University of Puget Sound
Tacoma, WA
 February - May

Jeanne Marie Teutonico
William A. Bernoudy Resident
Associate Director, Programs
Getty Conservation Institute
Los Angeles, CA
 September - December

Brenda Way
Donald and Maria Cox Artist in Residence
Artistic & Executive Director
ODC/Dance
San Francisco, CA
 April - June

Judith Di Maio
Colin Rowe Designer in Residence
Dean, School of Architecture and Design
New York Institute of Technology
Old Westbury, NY
 December - February

Guy Nordenson
William A. Bernoudy Resident
Principal, Guy Nordenson & Associates
New York, NY
 December - February

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Board of Trustees


Laurie Anderson, RAAR'06
Mercedes T. Bass
Robert Beaser, FAAR'78
Boris Biancheri
Suzanne Deal Booth
T. Corey Brennan, FAAR'88*
Mary Schmidt Campbell
Verdella Caracciolo di Forino
Adele Chatfield-Taylor, FAAR'84*
David M. Childs, RAAR'04
Chuck Close, RAAR'96
Daniel G. Cohen
Michael Conforti, FAAR'76 RAAR'08
Carmela Vircillo Franklin, FAAR'85, RAAR'02*
Bernard D. Frischer, FAAR'76, RAAR'97
Elaine K. Gazda
Barbara Goldsmith
Anthony Grafton, RAAR'04
Michael Graves, FAAR'62, RAAR'79
Eugenio Grippo
Richard L. Grubman
William B. Hart
Rea S. Hederman
Drue Heinz
Mary Margaret Jones, FAAR'98
Wendy Evans Joseph, FAAR'84
Thomas F. Kelly, FAAR'86, RAAR'02
Paul LeClerc
Diane Britz Lotti
Thom Mayne
Richard Meier, RAAR'74
Roberto A. Mignone
Susan Nitze
Nancy M. O'Boyle
John A. Pinto, FAAR'75, RAAR'06
Jessie H. Price
Michael C.J. Putnam, FAAR'64, RAAR'70
Vittorio Ripa di Meana
Michael Rock, FAAR'00
C. Brian Rose, FAAR'92
John M. Shapiro
Robert B. Silvers
Laurie Simmons, RAAR'05
Michael I. Sovern
Mark Strand, RAAR'83
Steven Stucky, RAAR'06
Billie Tsien, RAAR'00
Fred Wilson

FAAR = Fellow of the American Academy in Rome
RAAR = Resident of the American Academy in Rome
*Ex-officio

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Affiliated Fellows


Ingrid Ciulisova
Mellon East-Central European Visiting Scholar
Slovak Academy of Sciences
Institute of Art History
Bratislava, Slovak Republic
 October - February

Emily Bates
Royal Dutch Institute Affiliated FellowVisual Artist Amsterdam, Netherlands 17 September – 15 December
Visual Artist
Amsterdam, Netherlands
 September - December

Agnes Bencze
Mellon East Central European Travel Grant
Assistant Professor of Classics
Peter Pazmany Catholic University
Piliscsaba, Hungary
 January - January

Carola Bonfili
Italian Fellow in the Arts
Visual Artist
Rome, Italy
 March - June

Kendall Buster
Virginia Commonwealth University Affiliated Fellow
Visual Artist
Richmond, Virginia
 March - April

Amanda J. Coles
Oscar Broneer Traveling Fellow
Ancient History Group
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
 September - March

Daniela Dumbrava
Mellon East-Central European Visiting Scholar
Istituto di Studi Umanistici
Università degli Studi di Firenze
Florence, Italy
 October - January

Consuelo Dutschke
Michael Sovern/Columbia University Affiliated Fellow
Columbia University
New York, New York
 February - March

Rèka Forrai
Mellon East-Central European Visiting Scholar
Center for Hellenic Traditions, Central European University
Budapest, Hungary
 December - March

Ilona Fried
Mellon East-Central European Visiting Scholar
Eötvös Loránd University
Budapest, Hungary
 December - March

Jane Ginsburg
Columbia University Affiliated Fellow
Columbia University
New York, New York
 March - May

Fabio Guidetti
AAR/ Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa Echange Fellow
Ph.D Candidate in Archaeology
Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa
Pisa, Italy
 September - June

Abdulamir Mahdi Hamdani
CAORC Middle East and Mediterranean Basin Research Fellow
Director, Dhi-qar Province Archaeology
Ur Project, Nasiriyah Museum
Nasiriyah, Iraq
 September - December

Michael Harris
The Institute of Classical Architecture and Classical America Affiliated Fellow
Graduate School of Design
Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts
 September - December

Filippo Perocco
Italian Fellow in the Arts
Composer
Casale sul Sile, Italy
 December - March

Olga Plaszczewska
Mellon East-Central European Visiting Scholar
Krakow, Poland
 February - February

Alexander Stille
Marian and Andrew Heiskell Visiting Critic
Professor of Journalism
Columbia University
New York, NY
 January - May

Rachel Van Dusen
AAR/ Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa Echange Fellow
Ph.D Candidate
Department of Classics, University at Buffalo
Buffalo, New York
 October - July

Luca Vitone
Italian Fellow in the Arts
Visual Artist
Milan, Italy
 September - December

Jeffrey S. Williams
Leonore Annenber Fellow in the Arts
Visual Artist
Houston, Texas
 September - August

Ken Moore
Metropolitan Museum of Art Visiting Curator
New York, NY
 January - February

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Visiting Artists and Scholars


Josiah W. Osgood, FAAR'02
Associate Professor of Classics
Georgetown University
Washington, DC
 January - February

Mia Brownell & Martin H. Kruck
Visual Artist
New Rochelle, NY
 January - January

Andrew M. Finch
Co-Director of Government Affairs
Association of Art Musuem Directors
Washington, D.C.
 January - January

Adele Chatfield-Taylor, FAAR'83
President
American Academy in Rome
New York, New York
 January - January

Ágnes Bencze
Mellon East Central European Travel Grant
 Assistant Professor of Classics
Péter Pázmány Catholic University
Piliscsaba, Hungary
 January - January

Mark Strand, RAAR'83 & Jennifer Fearon
Trustee, American Academy in Rome
Professor of English and Comparative Literature
Columbia University
 January - January

Mark Rakatansky
Principal, Mark Rakatansky Studio
Visiting Assistant Professor of Architecture
Columbia University
New York, New York
 January - January

George Wheeler
Research Scientist
Department of Scientific Research
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York, New York
 January - January

T. Corey Brennan, FAAR'88
Trustee, American Academy in Rome
President, AAR Society of Fellows
Associate Professor of Classics
Rutgers University
New Brunswick, New Jersey
 January - January

Janet Whitchurch & Randall Whitchurch
Visual Artist
Monterey, California
 January - February

James Bodnar, FAAR'80, AIA
James Bodnar Architect
New York, New York
 January - January

Christian Capurro
Visual Artist
Melbourne, Australia
 January - January

Fikret K. Yegül, RAAR’98
Professor of History of Architecture
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, California
 January - March

Diane G. Favro
Professor of Architecture and Urban Design
University of California
Santa Barbara, California
 January - March

Grant Drumheller & Karina Drumheller
Painter
New Castle, New Hampshire
 December - January

Nicole Jaquard
Assistant Professor of Arts
Indiana University
Bloomington, Indiana
 December - January

Thomas Oboe Lee, FAAR'87 & Kristin Beckwith
Departed Feathers Music
Cambridge, Massachusetts
 December - January

Sam Waterston & Lynn Waterston
Actor
New York, New York
 December - January

James Galvin & Dora Malech
Graduate Poetry Workshop
University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
 December - January

Christopher M. Ocker & Varda Koch Ocker
Member of the Core Doctoral Faculty
Graduate Theological Union
Berkeley, California
 December - February

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Juries

2007-2008 Juries


Ancient Studies

Michael C.J. Putnam, FAAR'64, RAAR'70
W. Duncan MacMillan II Professor of Classics, Brown University, Providence, RI

Kathryn Gleason, FAAR'87
Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

Andrew M. Riggsby
Associate Professor of Classics and of Art and Art History, University of Texas, Austin, TX

Ann Vasaly, FAAR'83
Associate Professor of Classical Studies, Boston University, Boston, MA

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Design

Michael Graves, FAAR'62, RAAR'78 (Jury Chair)
FAAR'62, RAAR'78
President, Michael Graves & Associates, Princeton, NJ

Frederick Steiner, FAAR'98
Dean, School of Architecture, University of Texas, Austin, TX

Günther Vogt
Landscape Architect & Professor, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland

Sarah Whiting
Assistant Professor, History and Theory, School of Architecture, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ and Principal, WW, Princeton NJ

Lorraine Wild
Faculty, California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles, CA, and Principal, Green Dragon Office, Los Angeles, CA

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Historic Preservation and Conservation

Charles L. Granquist (Jury Chair)
Executive Director, Pocantico Center of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, New York, NY

Joan Berkowitz
Director of Conservation, Superstructures Engineers + Architects, New York, NY

Elizabeth Glassman
President and CEO, Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, IL

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Literature

Charles Simic (Jury Chair)
Poet

Mary Gordon
Novelist and nonfiction writer

Allan Gurganus
Novelist

A. R. Gurney
Playwright

Edward Hoagland
Nonfiction writer

Jane Smiley
Novelist

Rosanna Warren
Poet

Edmund White
Novelist

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Medieval Studies

Richard Gyug (Jury Chair)
Professor of History
Fordham University
Bronx, NY

James Borders
Professor of Music
Department of Musicology, The University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI

Rachel Jacoff
Carlson Professor of Comparative Literature and Italian Studies Wellesley College
Wellesley, MA

Dorothy H. Verkerk
Associate Professor of Art History
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Modern Italian Studies

Alexander Stille (Jury Chair)
San Paolo Professor of International Journalism
Columbia University,
New York, NY

Barry Bergdoll
The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture & Design
The Museum of Modern Art
New York, NY

Charles S. Maier
Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA

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Musical Composition

Fred Lerdahl, RAAR'88 (Jury Chair)
Fritz Reiner Professor of Musical Composition
Columbia University, New York, NY

Donald Crockett
Professor of Composition
University of Southern California

Lee Hyla, FAAR'91, RAAR'05
Wyatt Chair of Music Composition
Northwestern University
Evanston, IL

Harold Meltzer, FAAR'05
Visiting Assistant Professor
Vassar College
Poughkeepsie, NY

Melinda Wagner
Composer
Ridgewood, NJ

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Renaissance and Early Modern Studies

John Pinto, FAAR'75, RAAR'06 (Jury Chair)
Howard Crosby Butler Memorial Professor of History of Architecture
Princeton University, Princeton, NJ

Anthony M. Cummings
Professor of Music
Lafayette College
Easton, PA

Kenneth Gross
Professor of English
University of Rochester, Rochester, NY

Randolph Starn, RAAR'02
Professor of History and Italian Studies
University of California, Berkeley, CA

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Visual Arts

Laurie Simmons, RAAR'05 (Jury Chair)
Artist
New York, NY

Laurie Anderson, RAAR'06
Artist
New York, NY

Connie Butler
Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings
The Museum of Modern Art
New York, NY

Matthew Drutt
Executive Director
Artpace San Antonio
San Antonio, TX

Lari Pittman
Artist
Los Angeles, CA

Scott Rothkopf
Senior Editor
Artforum International
New York, NY

Fred Wilson
Artist
New York, NY

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Staff


New York

Adele Chatfield-Taylor
President

Elizabeth Gray Kogen
Vice President for Development

Curt B. Sharp
Vice President for Finance and Administration

Barbara Alton
Office of the President/Executive Assistant

Suzanne Liebolt
Office of the President/Corporate Secretary

Enrico Dressler
Office of the President/Administrative Assistant

Shawn Miller
Program Director

Jennifer Dudley
Associate Director of Development

Christiana Killian
Development Associate

Anibal Carrion
Accountant

Rosalin Duran
Finance/Administrative Assistant

Daniel Curtis
Volunteer

Cristina Puglisi
Assistant Director for Properties

Asya Reznikov
Program Assistant

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Rome

Carmela Vircillo Franklin
Director

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Administration

Gianpaolo Battaglia
Executive Secretary

Tina Cancemi
Assistant for External Affairs

Inga Clausing
Campaign Associate

Luigi de Marco
Superintendent of Facilities

R. William Franklin
Associate Director for External Affairs

Marina Lella
Executive Assistant to the Director

Marvin Mari
Systems Support Specialist

Pina Pasquantonio
Assistant Director for Operations

Alessandra Vinciguerra
Bass Superintendent of Gardens

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Programs

Giulia Barra
Programs Assistant

Martin Brody
Andrew Heiskell Arts Director

Roberto Caracciolo
Arts Liaison

Giovanni Cimoroni
Technician for Programs, Operations and Special Projects

Anne Coulson
Senior Programs Associate

Lexi Eberspacher
Programs Associate

Thomas A. J. McGinn
Andrew W. Mellon Professor-in-Charge

Gianni Ponti
Archaeology Liaison

Richard Trythall
Music Liaison

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Finance

Cagnizzi Francesco
Assistant Director for Finance

Roberto La Gioia
Bookkeeper

Lidia Villani
Cashier

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Library

Paolo Brozzi
Stacks Assistant

Denise Gavio
Assistant Librarian

Paolo Imperatori
Cataloguing Assistant

Rebecka Lindau
Drue Heinz Librarian

Tina Mirra
Acquisitions Assistant

Antonio Palladino
Preservation Assistant

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Photographic Archive

Alessandra Capodiferro
Curator

Lavinia Ciuffa
Curatorial Assistant

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Villa Aurelia

Andrew Bay
Assistant

Alfredo Cianfrocca
Caretaker

Fiorella De Carolis

Paola Gaetani
Villa Aurelia Manager

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Gate Reception

Renzo Carissimi
Head Gatekeeper

Luca Zamponi

Rainer Tullner
Substitute Gatekeeper

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Housekeeping

Sebastiano Bellanca

Luana Di Marzio

Fabrizio Lambiti

Massimo Porcelli

Fabio Stocchi

Elena Tinaburri

Claudia Tonetti
Head of Housekeeping

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Buildings and Maintenance

Mauro Abbatelli
Head of Maintenance

Giorgio Cei

Christoph Dell'Ospedale

Tommaso Musa

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Grounds

Marco Casani
Head Gardener, Villa Aurelia

Luigi Cocozza
Head Gardener, McKim Mead & White

Leonardo Destito

Enzo Donati

Andrea Francini

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Rome Sustainable Food Project

Christopher Boswell
Sous Chef

Mirella Misenti

Gabriel Soare
Waiter

Mona Talbott
Executive Chef

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Society of Fellows

The Society is composed of all Rome Prize Fellows, Residents and affiliates of the American Academy in Rome. A council elected by the members represents the views of the Society of Fellows in regard to significant concerns of the Academy and serves as a liaison between the Society and the Academy's President and Board of Trustees.

The Society's broad mission is fourfold:

-to provide assistance, expertise and information to Fellows, Residents, affiliates and the Academy proper;
-to sponsor public events that are of interest to the Academy community and that promote the work of the Society's members and the Academy;
-to foster collaboration and a spirit of community among the Society's members;
-and to encourage continuing involvement with, and support of, the Academy.

To view the Society of Fellows website, click here.

Job Opportunities

Editor, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome
View position description PDF
application deadline: 15 March 2009

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Recent News

Arthur and Janet C. Ross Library reopenedRead more

The Academy


The American Academy in Rome

The American Academy in Rome is one of the leading American overseas centers for independent studies and advanced research in the fine arts and humanities. It is a place where extraordinary moments have brought creative talents together in unexpected ways. Yehudi Wyner, a 1953 Rome Prize winner in music, said, "The Italian experience — which in the beginning lasted three years... was among the profoundest and most long lasting influences on my life in terms of an approach to life."
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School of Fine Arts
The School of Fine Arts provides support to the annual Rome Prize Fellows in architecture, design arts, historic preservation and conservation, landscape architecture, literature, musical composition, and visual arts.

The School of Fine Arts sponsors public programs to provide Fellows a cultural bridge between the United States, Italy, and Europe. Among the activities designed for the Fellows are site visits and trips to locations of cultural interest as well as visits to the Academy by influential artists and scholars.
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School of Classical Studies

Founded in 1895 as the American School of Classical Studies in Rome (which merged into the Academy in 1913), the Academy's scholarly division offers fellowships in all phases of Italy's history and culture, from the ancient world to modern times.

Each year, through its Rome Prize competition, the Academy awards twelve fellowships for research in Ancient Studies, Medieval Studies, Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, and Italian Studies.
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The Gardens

The American Academy includes eleven acres of organically-cultivated gardens atop the Janiculum Hill, an area in Rome with a long history of gardens. Part of the Horti Caesaris and Getae, it was occupied in the sixteenth century by several Casini in Vigna and in the late nineteenth century by smaller villas and gardens.

Since the adoption of the organic cultivation method, twelve varieties of butterflies have settled on the Academy grounds, and they have become a haven for hedgehogs, robins, herons, blue tits, woodpeckers, lizards, and a variety of bees.

In 1986, the Academy's Board of Trustees launched a campaign to restore the gardens to their original splendor.

In 1990, the Academy began the implementation of the Landscape Master Plan, which continues today.

The Academy's two main gardens are those around the Villa Aurelia and the Mercedes and Sid R. Bass Garden behind the McKim, Mead & White Building and around the Casa Rustica.

Villa Aurelia Gardens

The original gardens, laid down by the Farnese at the end of 1600, were destroyed in a bombardment by French artillery in 1849.

Old engravings and maps show a formal space divided into geometrical areas by rows of trees. This layout survived for centuries with few changes.
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Casa Rustica Gardens

Behind the McKim, Mead & White Building lies the Mercedes and Sid R. Bass Garden which recalls the vanished landscape of the Roman countryside. In fact, it occupies the site of a 17th century vineyard, Vigna Malvasia, that surrounded the building known today as Casa Rustica. The defensive walls of Rome, built in 1642-1644 by Pope Urban VIII, enclose two sides of the garden. The overall atmosphere is that of a quiet, rural place with simple plantings and a domestic feeling. Fruit trees, olives and cypresses edge the sloping lawns, dotted with chamomile daisies and naturalized bulbs.
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The Library


Library

Renovated in 2006/2007, the Arthur and Janet C. Ross Library contains over 135,000 volumes in Classical studies and the history of art and architecture.

Especially strong and widely respected are its collections in ancient Mediterranean archaeology and art, Greek and Latin literature, ancient topography including the history of the city of Rome, ancient religions, and related fields such as epigraphy, numismatics and papyrology.
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The Janiculum

The American Academy in Rome occupies ten building and eleven acres of gardens atop the Janiculum, the highest hill within the walls of Rome.

 Among the buildings are the McKim, Mead & White building known as the Academy building, the Villa Aurelia and the Casa Rustica.

The boundaries of the property are marked by several notable monuments. To the west is Porta San Pancrazio, once the Porta Aurelia of the city wall built in 1642-1644 by Pope Urban VIII. To the east is the majestic fountain of the Acqua Paola, built in 1612 by Pope Paul V.

The Villa Aurelia was built on top of the walls erected in 280 A.D. by the Roman Emperor Aurelian, while the Academy building was constructed above and aqueduct of Trajan, which can still be accessed through the building's basement.

The northern part of the Academy was originally owned by the Farnese family while the southern end was the property of the Barberini and Colonna di Sciarra families.

Villa Aurelia

The Villa Aurelia, originally built for Cardinal Girolamo Farnese around 1650, is the setting for conferences, public receptions, concerts, and other programs. It also includes apartments for the Academy's Residents, Visiting Artists, and Visiting Scholars and is surrounded by 3.8 acres of magnificent gardens.
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McKim, Mead & White building (Academy building)
The Academy building is the only structure in Europe designed by McKim, Mead & White.

Charles Follen McKim (1847 – 1909) was among the founders of the Academy and was President of the Academy when the building was first conceived.
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Casa Rustica
Situated in the Academy's Mercedes and Sid R. Bass Garden, Casa Rustica was built on the site of a small villa or casino constructed at the end of the 16th century by Cardinal Innocenzo Malvasia.
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