Michael Straus

Michael Straus is a Trustee of the American Academy in Rome. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Aberdeen, an M.Phil. from Queens' College, University of Cambridge, an M.A. from Columbia University, a J.D. from New York University School of Law, and an A.B. from Columbia College. He has practiced law with firms including Sullivan & Cromwell and Straus & Boies, LLP, and served with the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal in The Hague and as clerk to the Hon. John R. Bartels, Senior United States District Judge; since 2004 he has led Montreux Partners LP. 

Alongside his legal career, he is a scholar of classics and theology, with publications spanning translation, translation studies, and classical ritual, including a translation of Pablo Neruda's Grapes and the Wind and forthcoming work on Aristophanes and the New Testament; in 2026 he received the Paideia Institute's Arete Award in recognition of this work. He is deeply engaged in the visual arts as well, serving as Director and Chairman Emeritus of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Advisor and Chairman Emeritus of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and Director of the Keith Sonnier Foundation, in addition to his membership on MoMA's David Rockefeller Council and his trusteeship of the Birmingham-Southern College Foundation. He recently founded the Aardt Foundation, a nonprofit based in a former industrial warehouse in Birmingham, Alabama, which houses his collection of works from the early Renaissance to the present and makes it available to a wider public both in person and online, alongside a growing program of exhibitions, scholarship, and public engagement.