Encounters I (opening October 15, 2019): John Cage/Philip Guston; Eleanor Clark/Eugene Berman; Al Held/Stephen Kieran James Timberlake

Encounters II (opening May 29, 2020): Julie Mehretu/J. Meejin Yoon

In celebration of the Academy’s 125th anniversary, the exhibition Encounters investigates the enduring impact of the city of Rome as a dynamic creative laboratory through a series of interdisciplinary exchanges. Spanning the immediate postwar period to the present day, the results of these collaborations were not always immediately apparent, but their impact continues to resonate throughout the arts and the humanities in the United States and around the world.

This exhibition, articulated in two parts, highlights specific examples of this central aspect of the Academy’s mission, demonstrating the interplay between visual art, musical composition, literature, and architecture set against, interpreting, and engaging monuments and urban space in Rome and elsewhere in Italy.

The exhibition also traces how these encounters have contributed to the development of several distinct strains of abstraction. Emerging out of conceptions of city, space, society, and history, and employing differing perspectives and techniques, such as collage and the interpretation of architecture, these strains, expressed in a range of separate, but interconnected media, from drawings to public monuments, owe a great deal to the unique intellectual and creative atmosphere at the American Academy in Rome.

The exhibition is curated by Peter Benson Miller. It is part of a year-long series of programs and events conceived around the theme of “Encounters,” which celebrates the 125th anniversary of the founding of the American Academy in Rome.


Funding for the exhibition has been provided in part by the Al Held Foundation and by Frank and Irene Salerno, remembering their dear friend Rodolfo Rinaldi.

T. Corey Brennan (1988 Fellow and 2020 Resident), associate professor of classics at Rutgers University, will give a keynote lecture, titled “Foreign Academies in Rome: The Quest for Acceptance,” at the conference Model Rome – International Capital Cities of Science and Arts in the 20th Century at the Finnish Academy in Rome’s Villa Lante. The conference continues on October 23 and 24, 2019, at the German Historical Institute in Rom and the German Archaeological Institute, respectively.

The lecture will be given in English. For more information and to view the full program, please consult https://www.hsozkult.de/event/id/termine-41368.

This talk is part of a year-long series of programs and events conceived around the theme of “Encounters,” which celebrates the 125th anniversary of the founding of the American Academy in Rome.

The American Academy in Rome celebrates its 125th anniversary by opening its 2019–20 programming season with a Conversations/Conversazioni between Vatican Museum director Barbara Jatta and AAR director John Ochsendorf (2008 Fellow). Jatta will discuss her professional history with the Academy, balancing access to art and the pressures of tourism, and accommodating tradition and innovation in the Vatican Museums.

This event is free and open to the public. It will be held in English.

The discussion inaugurates a series of events centered around the anniversary theme “Encounters,” which will investigate the impact of exposure to the city of Rome, its artifacts, and its narratives.

The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation is the 2019–20 season sponsor of Conversations/Conversazioni: From the American Academy in Rome.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS CONFERENCE HAS BEEN CANCELED.

This conference celebrates 125 years of the American Academy in Rome and its engagement in the study of ancient monuments by looking to the future to explore the ways that digital technologies are affecting the ways we study and present the past.

The celebration begins with an evening lecture (Thursday, March 12) by Martin Maischberger (Antikensammlung Berlin) on the Pergamon Panorama in Berlin, a project that takes the nineteenth-century concept of the cyclorama and uses digital technology to bring it into the twenty-first century to re-create the ancient site of Pergamon.

The next day (Friday, March 13), a series of papers in the morning focus on different modes of digital acquisition and analysis at a variety of types of ancient archaeological sites. A major goal is to explore the ways that digital technologies are changing the questions we ask. The papers in the afternoon session examine the new ways that archaeological information is being disseminated as well as some of the challenges faced in using it to engage the public with issues of cultural heritage. In addition, there will be computer stations set up allowing the attendees to interact with some of the new applications and virtual-reality projects.

The speakers include Francesca Anichini, Stefano Borghini, Maria Letizia Buonfiglio, Peter Campbell, Alessandro D’Alessio, Steven Ellis (2013 Fellow, 2016 Affiliated Fellow), Elizabeth Fentress, Bernard Frischer (1976 Fellow, 1997 Resident), Gabriele Gattiglia, Letizia Gualandi, Giacomo Landeschi, Rachel Opitz, Stefania Pergola, Federica Michela Rossi, Arianna Traviglia, and Gianluca Zanzi.

Talking to Strangers: Art and Democracy in These Times will feature a conversation between Danielle Allen and Theaster Gates on their creative approaches to a wide range of issues.

Allen is the 2020 Esther Van Deman Resident in the Humanities at the American Academy in Rome and is the James Bryant Conant University Professor and Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Gates is the 2020 Mary Miss Resident in Visual Arts at the American Academy in Rome and is Professor in the Department of Visual Arts and the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago.

The conversation will be held in English.

The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation is the 2019–20 season sponsor of Conversations/Conversazioni: From the American Academy in Rome.

The speakers for the event are: J. Meejin Yoon, dean of the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University (2006 Fellow, 2020 Resident); the artist Julie Mehretu (2020 Resident); and Adam D. Weinberg, Alice Pratt Brown Director of the Whitney Museum of American Art (2020 Resident).

This Conversations/Conversazioni is part of a year-long series of programs and events conceived around the theme of “Encounters,” which celebrates the 125th anniversary of the founding of the American Academy in Rome.

The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation is the 2019–20 season sponsor of Conversations/Conversazioni: From the American Academy in Rome.

In this lecture, Teo Ruiz (2020 Resident) will emphasize the encounter of different civilizations in Sicily and the production of hybrid cultural forms as a result of these cultural encounters. Beginning with a brief account of Sicilian history, the talk will mostly center on the period encompassed by Muslim rule and the coming of the Normans, concluding with the reign of the Hohenstaufen ruler, Frederick II. A brief epilogue will trace the history of the island after 1282 and the present flow of people into the western Mediterranean.

Ruiz is a scholar of the social and popular cultures of late medieval and early modern Spain and the western Mediterranean. He is Distinguished Professor of History and of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of California, Los Angeles. His most recent books are: The Western Mediterranean and the World: 400 CE to the Present (2018), Spanish Society, 1348–1700 (2017), A King Travels: Festive Traditions in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain (2012), and The Terror of History: On the Uncertainties of Life in Western Civilization (2011).

The lecture will be held in English.

This talk is part of a year-long series of programs and events conceived around the theme of “Encounters,” which celebrates the 125th anniversary of the founding of the American Academy in Rome.

This panel discussion will bring together three speakers—the interdisciplinary artists Yto Barrada (2018 Resident) and Sanford Biggers (2018 Fellow) and Peter Benson Miller, formerly Andrew Heiskell Arts Director for the American Academy in Rome—for an engaging dialogue about the role of contemporary art in sparking conversations about compelling social issues.

Occasioned by Barrada’s exhibition The Dye Garden at the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, New York, until December 22, this conversation pairs Barrada with Biggers. Both artists work with thread, textiles, quilted fabric, and embroidery, as well as photography, installation, and film, to unearth forgotten histories and critically engage sociopolitical issues, including the legacy of slavery, diaspora, postcolonial identity, and resistance to dominant narratives. Together, they will discuss collaboration, the impact of their time in Rome on their recent work, and the overlap between their respective artistic projects, among other topics.

This Conversations/Conversazioni is part of a year-long series of programs and events conceived around the theme of “Encounters,” which celebrates the 125th anniversary of the founding of the American Academy in Rome.

The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation is the 2019–20 season sponsor of Conversations/Conversazioni: From the American Academy in Rome.

PLEASE NOTE THIS LECTURE HAS BEEN CANCELED.

Martin Maischberger, deputy director of Antikensammlung Berlin, and Lynne Lancaster (2002 Fellow), Andrew W. Mellon Professor for the Humanities, American Academy in Rome, will discuss “The Pergamon Panorama in Berlin: Where Tradition and Digital Innovation Converge.”

The conversation will be held in English.

The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation is the 2019–20 season sponsor of Conversations/Conversazioni: From the American Academy in Rome.

This discussion will feature two speakers—the author Musa Mayer and Marc Payot, president of Hauser & Wirth—for an engaging dialogue about the impact of Rome and Italy on the prolific later work of the American artist Philip Guston (1949 Fellow, 1971 Resident).

The conversation will take place at Hauser & Wirth, 548 West 22nd Street, New York, NY 10011.

This event is free and open to the public; an RSVP is required.

The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation is the 2019–20 season sponsor of Conversations/Conversazioni: From the American Academy in Rome.