The opening reception takes place on April 24, 2025, 6:00–8:00pm. Please RSVP to attend.

In collaboration with a83, Roman Thresholds explores how architectural elements—specifically doorways, atriums, archways, and even flora—become sites of artistic and conceptual inquiry. Through prints, drawings, and collages, the exhibition challenges the boundaries between architecture, visual art, and design within the context of the experience of the Rome Prize, the American Academy in Rome’s rigorous competition that attracts diverse, innovative fellows in the arts, humanities, and sciences.

Using this multidisciplinary framework, the exhibition examines both ancient and modern Roman architecture, investigating how these structures shape space, social interactions, and cultural systems. Thresholds challenged and renegotiated in the show range from the technical practices of architectural drawing and printing to criticism of colonialist forms in Western architecture.

The exhibiting architects and designers are Germane Barnes (2022 Fellow), Michael Graves (1962 Fellow, 1979 Resident), Katherine Jenkins (2023 Fellow), Yasmin Vobis (2017 Fellow), and David Weeks (2024 Fellow).

Two-dimensional work from Barnes’s Art Institute of Chicago exhibition Columnar Disorder present a critique of the Eurocentricity of classical architecture and its ignorance of migration histories and building traditions of North Africa in antiquity. Charcoal and ink drawings by Weeks and Graves, created during their Rome Prize fellowships from 2023–24 and 1960–962, respectively, demonstrate a commitment to design as an evolving language from antiquity to the present day. In contrast, Vobis’s archetypal Color Space reconsiders systems of color and their interactions with modernist concerns of space, structure, and organization. Finally, monotype prints of Roman weeds by Jenkins provide a necessary ecological lens to the show and recontextualizes Rome’s landscape and street identity through exploration of their natural aesthetic qualities.

The resulting dialogue between the works invites viewers to reconsider the function and symbolism of these iconic features of Rome’s built environment, exploring their enduring relevance in today’s broader architectural and cultural landscape.