While we enjoy these dog days of summer and Romans disperse for the August vacanze, the American Academy shares an early preview of our upcoming fall programming in Rome and New York. With concerts, exhibitions, panels, and more, AAR’s public events will explore material cultures, the environment, and democracy, among other topics. Because AAR is a place of making, materiality is at the heart of the program, notably through an exhibition of artists’ books.
A full program of events will be announced at the start of the academic year on aarome.org.
September
AAR welcomes the newest class of Rome Prize Fellows, and on September 10, Peter N. Miller will deliver the annual President’s Lecture, to be followed by the opening reception (by invitation only).
In New York, AAR and the Italian Cultural Institute in New York will present a Notes from Rome concert of work by Fellows in Musical Composition, on the evening of September 18.
On September 26 in Rome, we open our fall show, Artists Making Books, which brings together over one hundred books from the Arthur & Janet C. Ross Library and two private Italian collections. Running for eleven weeks (through December 7), the exhibition probes relationships between arts, graphic design, publishers, and books and explores the medium’s physicality and power of circulation.
October
The musical program continues with an October 4 concert at Auditorium Parco della Musica. Entitled The River’s Sweet Song: Composers at the American Academy in Rome, works from composers who are currently in residence at AAR will be performed by the Parco della Musica’s Contemporanea Ensemble.
On October 8, the artists Emilio Isgrò and Sheila Pepe (2025 Fellow) will discuss Art in the Public Realm, a dialogue that will take place at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna.
A major humanities conference, The Senate: From Antiquity to Modern Times, will examine the forces, peoples, and ideas that enabled the Roman Senate to direct political, social, and religious evolution. Organized by Michele Renee Salzman (1987 Fellow, 2008 Resident) and Edward Watts and taking place October 22–24, the conference will examine resources and energies that enabled this resilient institution to respond to crises and consider how the memory of Rome’s senatorial successes inspired later adaptations of the senate in places as diverse as eighteenth-century America and Renaissance Florence.
November
In New York, AAR and the Italian Cultural Institute will join forces on November 21 for another program, a panel entitled Material Afterlives, featuring the preservationist and artist Jorge Otero-Pailos (2022 Resident) and the Princeton University classicist Caroline Cheung (2017 Fellow).
On November 22 in Rome, AAR will participate in Festival della Cultura Americana with a talk on the work of Langston Hughes.
December
Rubina Raja, professor of classical archaeology at Aarhus University, will deliver the 2024 Thomas Spencer Jerome Lecture Series in early December. Collectively titled Contextualising Roman Ruins: Urban Cultures of Antiquity and the Long Late Antiquity in the Near East, the series comprises three formal talks and a seminar focusing on the rich and complex urban cultures in the Mediterranean region.
The Academy will conclude the calendar year with Winter Open Studios on December 12. Called Adrift, this event will look at practices that are looking at water empirically and metaphorically. The two front pavilion studios will open to the public, and the evening will also include talks, performances, and lectures, including by artists based in Rome.
More details about these events, and additional programs, will be announced later. Stay tuned!
Please note that event details are subject to change.