The National Endowment for the Arts has awarded a $35,000 grant to support Rome Prize Fellowships in the visual arts. These federal awards have been beacons to generations of artists in their formative years, and this year the grant allows the American Academy in Rome to provide fellowships to five visual artists, giving them an unparalleled opportunity to spend a year in Rome as part of the Academy community, engaged in the creation, interpretation, presentation, and performance of artistic work.
This year the NEA grant supports fellowships for Kamrooz Aram, Nao Bustamante, Mike Cloud, Jeanine Oleson, and Estefania Puerta Grisales. Rome Prize Fellows have use of the Academy’s facilities, participation in a full schedule of activities, and numerous services. In addition to time and space to pursue individual work, they have ample opportunities to collaborate with an international community of artists and scholars.
The Academy has a long history as an institution that nurtures the development of both emerging and established artists, and one that presents American contemporary art to an enthusiastic and receptive international audience. The encounter with Rome represents now, as it has done since the Academy’s inception, something unique: a chance for American artists to spend significant time interacting and working in one of the oldest, most cosmopolitan cities in the world.
The Academy’s grant is part of the first round of recommended awards for fiscal year 2024, with 1,288 grants totaling $32 million. Recipients include organizations from all fifty states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico; they are recommended in the categories of Grants for Arts Projects, Challenge America, Research Grants in the Arts, and Research Labs. Also in the announcement are NEA grants to individuals for literature fellowships, which include creative writing fellowships in prose and fellowships to support translation projects.