Conversations/Conversazioni

The photographer Iwan Baan and Mark Robbins, president of the American Academy in Rome, will discuss the legacy of Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi’s landmark publication, Learning from Las Vegas, in the twenty-first century. They will address the architectural lessons that informed Scott Brown and Venturi’s study of Las Vegas, particularly those from Italy, a place close to Venturi’s heart. They will also consider how Venturi and Scott Brown’s ideas about Las Vegas, published in 1972, and the relationship between images and architecture central to that publication, have evolved over the past half century.

The conversation will inaugurate the Academy’s fall 2022 exhibition, From Las Vegas to Rome: Photographs by Iwan Baan. Lindsay Harris, interim Andrew Heiskell Arts Director and curator of the show, will introduce the discussion.

Iwan Baan is a photographer based in the Netherlands. Mark Robbins is the president and CEO of the American Academy in Rome and a 1997 Fellow in design.

The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation generously supports Conversations/Conversazioni at the American Academy in Rome.

This event, to be presented in person at the Academy as well as on Zoom, is free and open to the public. Please register for Zoom in advance. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Notice

Space in the Lecture Room is limited, and seats are available on a first-come, first-served basis. For access to the Academy, guests will be asked to show a valid photo ID and comply with COVID-19 safety protocols. Please contact events [at] aarome.org (events[at]aarome[dot]org) with any questions.

Backpacks and luggage with dimensions larger than 40 x 35 x 15 cm (16 x 14 x 6 in.) are not permitted on the property. There are no locker facilities available.

Please join us in New York as we kickoff the 2016 US season of Conversations | Conversazioni: From the American Academy in Rome, featuring a discussion between two leading figures in design, Michael Rock (2000 Fellow) and Michael Bierut (2016 Resident), at the Museum of Art and Design. They will discuss how design has both reflected and shaped perceptions of American culture.

Rock is a founding partner and creative director of 2x4 and professor of design at the Yale University School of Art. At 2x4, he leads a wide range of projects including design strategy, environmental graphics and media design. Previously, he was cofounder of Information Incorporated in Boston. From 1984 to 1991 he was adjunct professor of graphic design at the Rhode Island School of Design. In addition he was a fellow at the Jan Van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht, the Netherlands, and a contributing editor and graphic design journalist at I.D. Magazine in New York. His writing on design has appeared in a variety of publications including the New York Times, Print, AIGA Journal, and the British journal Eye. He holds a BA in humanities from Union College and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. He is the recipient of the 2000 Rome Prize in Design from the American Academy in Rome.

Bierut studied graphic design at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning, graduating summa cum laude in 1980. Prior to joining Pentagram’s New York office in 1990 as a partner, he was vice president of graphic design at Vignelli Associates. Bierut’s projects at Pentagram have included: identity and branding; environmental graphics and signage; exhibition design; packaging; and publication design. He has won hundreds of design awards and his work is represented in many museum collections. His monograph How To was published by Thames and Hudson and Harper Design in 2015. He was a 2016 Resident in design at the American Academy in Rome.

This event is at capacity, but you can watch this event live at https://livestream.com/aarome.

Support for Conversations/Conversazioni: From the American Academy in Rome is provided by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation.

A Conversation/Conversazioni with Guillermo Kuitca (2022 Resident) and Sonya Clark (2017 Affiliated Fellow) will be held in conjunction with the opening of the exhibition Regeneration. The event will be moderated by Lindsay Harris, interim Andrew Heiskell Arts Director and cocurator of Regeneration.

The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation generously supports Conversations/Conversazioni at the American Academy in Rome.

The Residency of Guillermo Kuitca is made possible by the Mary Miss Resident in Visual Art Fund.

Notice

Space in the Lecture Room is limited, and seats are available on a first-come, first-served basis. If you plan to attend an event with a group of over six guests or students, please inform events [at] aarome.org (events[at]aarome[dot]org) with at least 48 hours prior notice so that special arrangements can be made.

Guests will be asked to comply with Covid-19 safety protocols for events:

• Access to the Academy requires the presentation of a valid photo ID and a Super Green Pass
• FFP2 masks are required when indoors, and temperature will be checked before entry
• Visitor contact information may be shared for contact tracing

Please contact events [at] aarome.org (events[at]aarome[dot]org) with any questions.

Backpacks and luggage with dimensions larger than 40 x 35 x 15 cm (16 x 14 x 6 in.) are not permitted on the property. There are no locker facilities available.

Monuments, like those that define Rome, are intended to be permanent but can be most powerful when they are in decline, as ruins and remains. How do those engaged in historic preservation come to terms with this paradox? When is change acceptable, in what forms, and who gets to decide? Claire Lyons and Webber Ndoro will offer a transhistorical and cross-cultural set of responses to these questions, considering the politics of preservation from the perspective of institutions, governments, and a range of stakeholder communities.

This program is organized in conjunction with the AAR exhibition Regeneration, on view through June 12, 2022. Elizabeth Rodini, the Academy’s interim Director and a cocurator of Regeneration, will moderate.

Claire Lyons (2022 Resident) is curator in the Department of Antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and a specialist in the art and archaeology of pre-Roman Italy, Etruria, and Magna Graecia. Webber Ndoro is director general of ICCROM, an expert in global heritage management with a particular focus on the immovable heritage of sub-Saharan Africa.

This event, to be presented in person at the Academy as well as on Zoom, is free and open to the public. Please register in advance to watch on Zoom. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation generously supports Conversations/Conversazioni at the American Academy in Rome.

Notice

Space in the Lecture Room is limited, and seats are available on a first-come, first-served basis. If you plan to attend an event with a group of over six guests or students, please inform events [at] aarome.org (events[at]aarome[dot]org) with at least 48 hours prior notice so that special arrangements can be made.

Guests will be asked to comply with Covid-19 safety protocols for events:

• Access to the Academy requires the presentation of a valid photo ID and a Super Green Pass
• FFP2 masks are required when indoors, and temperature will be checked before entry
• Visitor contact information may be shared for contact tracing

Please contact events [at] aarome.org (events[at]aarome[dot]org) with any questions.

Backpacks and luggage with dimensions larger than 40 x 35 x 15 cm (16 x 14 x 6 in.) are not permitted on the property. There are no locker facilities available.

Please join us in New York for a Conversations/Conversazioni: From the American Academy in Rome, featuring a discussion between two important figures in contemporary art: Robert Storr and Lyle Ashton Harris (2001 Fellow) at the New School. In addition to discussing Harris’s creative process as a visual artist, the audience will also hear about his current and in-development work.

Storr and Harris will also speak about Nero su Bianco, the Academy’s upcoming exhibition which explores radical shifts in perceptions of Afro-Italian identity, subjectivity, and agency in contemporary Italy. The exhibition will feature work by an international group of artists taking the cultural, social, and political temperature at the crossroads of the Mediterranean, and is curated by Storr, Harris, and Peter Benson Miller. Nero su Bianco opens in Rome on May 26 in the AAR Gallery.

A professor and dean of the Yale School of Art since 2006, Storr is considered to be one of the most influential Americans in the art world. He was curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, from 1990 to 2002, where he organized exhibitions which enhanced the prominence of artists such as Elizabeth Murray, Gerhard Richter, Max Beckmann, Tony Smith, and Robert Ryman. From 2002 to 2006, Storr was the first Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. He has written numerous catalogues, articles, and books, including Philip Guston (1986), Chuck Close (with Lisa Lyons, 1987), and the forthcoming Intimate Geometries: The Work and Life of Louise Bourgeois. Storr was the commissioner of the 2007 Venice Biennale, the first American invited to assume that position.

For more than two decades, Harris has cultivated a diverse artistic practice ranging from photographic media, collage, installation, and performance. His work explores intersections between the personal and the political, examining the impact of ethnicity, gender, and desire on the contemporary social and cultural dynamic. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the 52nd Venice Biennale. Harris’s work has also been acquired by major international museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others.

Please join us in Houston, Texas, for a presentation by the Brooklyn-based artist Amy Sillman (2015 Resident) entitled Drawing in the Continuous Present. This talk has been organized in collaboration with the Menil Drawing Institute and is part of their series Draw In: Conversations and Lectures on Drawing and Its Resonances.

Sillman was the 2015 Mary Miss Artist in Residence at the American Academy in Rome. She has been the subject of two major solo exhibitions at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Her work is held in the collections of the Menil Drawing Institute; the Museum of Modern Art in New York; and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others.

Sillman will be introduced by Toby Kamps, the Menil’s curator of modern and contemporary Art. Mark Robbins, AAR president, will also be on hand to provide some remarks before Sillman’s lecture.

Support for Conversations/Conversazioni: From the American Academy in Rome is provided by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation.

A public conversation on the role of public/private partnerships and their potential in Italy. Italy is currently revising its laws and structures to incentivize private investment in culture. This discussion frontlines the possibilities, but also the responsibilities, of such partnerships. Various national economic models for incentivizing private investment in culture—from Italy, the United States, and the United Kingdom—will be summarized and debated in a first session. A second session will ask major donors and foundation chairmen to discuss the problem of impact. What kind of outcomes philanthropists expect and how these can be integrated with public priorities?

The event is organized in collaboration with Roma Capitale.

Participants include: Ministro per i Beni e le Attività Culturali Dario Franceschini; Assessore alla Cultura Giovanna Marinelli; Assessore a Scuola, Sport, Politiche Giovanili e Partecipazione Paolo Masini; Assessore al Patrimonio, Politiche UE, Comunicazione e Pari Opportunità Alessandra Cattoi; Giovanna Melandri (president of MAXXI); Roberto Orsi (Errepi Comunicazione/Osservatorio Socialis); Peter Gould (professor of cultural hertiage at the American University of Rome and board member of Sustainable Preservation Initiative); Lynn Meskell (professor of anthropology and archeology at Stanford University and currently American Academy in Rome Scholar in Residence); Robert Bewley (former director of Heritage Lottery Fund in the UK); Andrew Hetherington (Business to Arts, Ireland); Rena De Sisto (Bank of America Foundation); Carla Fendi (Fondazione Carla Fendi); Stefano Aluffi Pentini (Associazione Dimore Storiche Italiane, Lazio); Luigi Capello (LoveItaly); Judith Wade (Grandi Giardini Italiani); and Richard Hodges (Packard Humanities Institute).

The American Academy in Rome celebrates its 125th anniversary by opening its 2019–20 programming season with a Conversations/Conversazioni between Vatican Museum director Barbara Jatta and AAR director John Ochsendorf (2008 Fellow). Jatta will discuss her professional history with the Academy, balancing access to art and the pressures of tourism, and accommodating tradition and innovation in the Vatican Museums.

This event is free and open to the public. It will be held in English.

The discussion inaugurates a series of events centered around the anniversary theme “Encounters,” which will investigate the impact of exposure to the city of Rome, its artifacts, and its narratives.

The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation is the 2019–20 season sponsor of Conversations/Conversazioni: From the American Academy in Rome.

Please note: due to limited space, seating is available on a first-come, first-seated basis.

In the 700th year of the death of Dante Alighieri, writer Jonathan Levi will talk with filmmaker Ric Burns and literary scholar Riccardo Bruscagli about their new film on the life and work of Dante, which premieres on RAI in September. Between clips from the film, they will discuss Burns’s mix of reenactment by contemporary actors of Dante’s life and poetic journey with examinations by contemporary scholars from Italy and elsewhere of why, in the dark woods of the twenty-first century, Dante continues to inspire admiration and controversy.

Ric Burns is an award-winning documentary filmmaker best known for his eight-part series on the history of New York. Over the past thirty years, he has explored the complex dynamics of the American experience from The Donner Party and The Pilgrims through his most recent films Oliver Sacks: His Own Life and Driving While Black. Riccardo Bruscagli is a professor emeritus of Italian literature at the University of Florence whose scholarly work has focused on the Renaissance and more recently Dante. Writer Jonathan Levi, most recently of the novel Septimania, produced the theatrical adaptation of Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky’s translation of The Inferno of Dante that toured the United States in 1997.

The conversation will be held in English.

This event, to be presented in-person at the Academy as well as on Zoom, is free and open to the public. Please register in advance to watch on Zoom. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation is the 2021–22 season sponsor of Conversations/Conversazioni: From the American Academy in Rome.

Notice

Guests will be asked to comply with Covid-19 safety protocols for events:

• Access to the Academy requires the presentation of a valid photo ID and a Green Pass
• Masks are required when indoors, and temperature will be checked before entry
• Visitor contact information may be shared for contact tracing

Please contact events [at] aarome.org (events[at]aarome[dot]org) with any questions.

Backpacks and luggage with dimensions larger than 40 x 35 x 15 cm (16 x 14 x 6 in.) are not permitted on the property. There are no locker facilities available.

Paola Prestini, Paul Fromm Resident in Composition, will be joined by Copenhagen’s Enactlab to discuss their interdisciplinary arts, research, and community project exploring fundamental questions of what it means to have voice, and voice beyond language. The project is centered around Prestini’s opera, Sensorium Ex, a multi-sensory narrative woven together at the intersections of disability and artificial intelligence. The conversation will be enhanced by contributions from the opera’s co-creators, poet Brenda Shaughnessy and choreographer/dancer Jerron Herman, and a musical performance by cellist Raphael Bell.

The event will be held in English.

The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation is the 2021–22 season sponsor of Conversations/Conversazioni: From the American Academy in Rome. Additional funding is provided by the Paul Fromm Resident in Composition Fund and the Felix Lamond Fund.

Notice

Reservations are necessary to attend this event. To reserve your seat, please sign up at https://forms.gle/4boB2tVcQ9p9m4L86.

Guests will be asked to comply with Covid-19 safety protocols for events:

• Access to the Academy requires the presentation of a valid photo ID and a Green Pass
• Masks are required when indoors, and temperature will be checked before entry
• Visitor contact information may be shared for contact tracing

Please contact events [at] aarome.org (events[at]aarome[dot]org) with any questions.

Backpacks and luggage with dimensions larger than 40 x 35 x 15 cm (16 x 14 x 6 in.) are not permitted on the property. There are no locker facilities available.

Cosponsors