AAR invites applications for the annual Rome Prize competition!

This year the American Academy in Rome introduces a pilot Rome Prize dedicated to the Environmental Arts & Humanities, designed specifically for collaborative efforts. We encourage applications from artists and scholars working jointly on projects that help expand our understanding of the way human beings relate to, experience, or process their encounters with the natural world. Collaborative pairs may include artists of any sort (visual, digital, architectural, musical, literary, textile, performance) and scholars in any field (past, present, future, natural world, human world). The two winners of this Rome Prize will each receive a full stipend, their own individual living space, and will be invited to join the Rome Sustainable Food Program for meals. The winners will share a workspace. Applicants must demonstrate a preexisting working partnership to be considered for this fellowship and, as with all Rome Prize Fellowships, applicants have to make clear why this work needs to be done in Rome.

Applicants may apply for a full-term fellowship (about ten months) or a half-term fellowship (about five months).

The required application materials include a completed online application form and the following three documents, to be uploaded to your online application as three separate digital files:

1. Current résumé/curriculum vitae. Please include languages read and spoken and level of fluency.

2. One- to four-page proposal describing the project to be undertaken. Please be sure to address the following points/questions in your proposal:

• How will the proposed project and your own professional development will benefit from a residency within a multidisciplinary community in Rome?
• What guides or motivates your work?
• Rome is a modern city powerfully stamped by the material remains of the past. Is this past important to your present? If so, why?
• What, if any, resources in Rome or Italy will be significant to the completion of your proposed project?
• What kind of workspace do you need in Rome?

Please include bibliographical notes for any sources cited (not counted toward the four-page limit). Your proposal should be double-spaced with 10- to 12-point typeface and one-inch margins.

3. Work sample. If your work is primarily text based, please submit a writing sample–published or unpublished–of up to twenty pages. Be sure to include a bibliography and footnotes (not counted toward the page limit). If your work is a mixture of text and images, sound, and/or video, please submit a portfolio of up to forty pages with links to online video and audio files.

Also needed are three reference letters from professionals acquainted with you and your work. Recommenders will be asked to submit their letters electronically through our online system.

Finally, you must submit an application fee paid by credit card through our online payment option or by check or money order made payable to American Academy in Rome and mailed to the following address: 

American Academy in Rome
Attention: Environmental Arts & Humanities
535 West 22nd Street, Third Floor
New York, NY 10011

This fall, the American Academy in Rome is hosting three in-person information sessions about the Rome Prize. The first takes place at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia on Tuesday, September 24. The second will be presented at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence on Tuesday, October 8. The third will happen at Howard University in Washington, DC, on Thursday, October 17.

AAR will also present two general online information sessions on Zoom on September 23 and October 15. A third virtual meeting, focused only on landscape architecture, will happen on October 16.

These information sessions give prospective applicants a general overview of the Rome Prize application process and a look into the experience of living in the American Academy’s unique residential community in Rome.