Far Afield

Color photograph of the head and shoulders of an Italian man wearing round glasses and standing in front of a Noli map of Rome

In Memoriam: Marcello Barbanera

Marcello Barbanera, professor of classical archaeology and director of the museums at La Sapienza, has died. As an AAR Advisor in ancient studies, Barbanera was generous with his time and knowledge. In winter 2021, during full-on Covid, he generously opened the university’s cast museum for an Academy Walk and Talk, a memorable morning in difficult times. He will be missed.
Color photograph of a light skinned woman with tied back blond hair looking at the camera with a slight smile; she sits in a red chair in a lecture hall

Guggenheim Fellowship Winners

Eight members of the AAR community have won 2022 fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation: Mario Carpo (2005 Resident) in architecture, planning, and design; Kim Bowes (2006 Fellow and AAR Director from 2014 to 2017, pictured above) in classics; Alexandra Kleeman (2021 Fellow) and Lysley Tenorio (2016 Fellow) in fiction; Autumn Knight (2022 Fellow) in film and video; Linda Besemer (2003 Fellow) in fine arts; and Jay Hopler (2011 Fellow) and Valzhyna Mort (2022 Fellow) for poetry.
Screenshot of a television interview with a closeup of the head and shoulders of Laurie Anderson talking to a person off camera

Laurie Anderson on “60 Minutes”

When asked to describe her life and career, Laurie Anderson (2006 Resident) answered by saying “I tell stories.” The multimedia artist and performer was interviewed by Anderson Cooper for the venerated CBS news program, 60 Minutes.
Detail of the cover of Valzhyna Mort's poetry book showing a drawing of a young woman with blond hair holding a wolf; her left hand is raised with her fingers crossed in a lucky sign

Valzhyna Mort Wins Poetry Award

Valzhyna Mort, a current Rome Prize winner in literature, has won the 2022 UNT Rilke Prize for her collection, Music for the Dead and Resurrected. The $10,000 prize recognizes a book from a midcareer poet published in the preceding year that demonstrates exceptional artistry and vision.

 
A light skinned woman standing in an arcade in the interior courtyard of the main American Academy in Rome building

Gloria Bell Challenges the Vatican

Gloria Bell (2022 Terra Foundation Affiliated Fellow) told CBC that her research conflicts with the Vatican’s narrative regarding its enormous collection of Indigenous artifacts—from both her home country of Canada and around the world.
Aerial color photograph of the MIT campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, showing numerous neoclassical and modern buildings, the Charles River to the left, and various sports fields

John Ochsendorf to Lead New Design Center

What do AAR leaders do after they leave Rome? John Ochsendorf, director of the Academy from 2017 to 2020, has been tapped to become founding director of the MIT Morningside Academy for Design, a new multidisciplinary design center opening in the fall.
Detail of oil painting on linen that depicts a mountain range and clouds in sweeping, abstract shades of blue

Elliott Green Reinvents the Landscape

New paintings from 2012 Rome Prize Fellow Elliott Green bring abstraction in conversation with landscape. His solo exhibition at Miles McEnery Gallery in New York opened this week.
Vintage family color photograph of a woman and child in a kitchen cooking at the stove; both people look at the camera and smile

Alice Waters’s Daughter Reflects on Her Mother’s Legacy

Fanny Singer, daughter of Alice Waters, reflects on her mother’s accomplishments, including the founding of the transformative Rome Sustainable Food Project fifteen years ago, in the March issue of Harper’s Bazaar.
Color photograph of a dark skinned man sitting in profile on a balcony ledge, looking out onto the Roman skyline at dusk

Germane Barnes’s First Impressions

The architect Germane Barnes discovers that AAR is a truly international community. In his first two weeks as a Rome Prize Fellow, he met South African photographer and 2022 Affiliated Fellow Cole Ndelu (who took the above portrait) as well as two Rome Sustainable Food Project interns, Georgia Lahiff from Australia and Josefina Gimenez Bellucci from Argentina. Read more in his “What’s Good G?” column for Design Miami.
The neo-Renaissance facade of the venerable Boston Public Library in Copley Square designed by McKim, Mead, & White and built in 1888 (photograph © Lei Xu | Dreamstime.com)

HBO Show Renews Interest in McKim, Mead, & White

The Gilded Age on HBO has renewed interest in late-nineteenth-century American architecture, which includes the triumvirate of Charles Follen McKim, William Rutherford Mead, and Stanford White. Read more about the architects of the Academy’s main building in House Beautiful.
Color photograph of a brown skinned woman wearing glasses and a black shirt and standing in the gardens of the Academy's Villa Aurelia; she looks at the camera with a slight smile

In Memoriam: Anuradha Mathur

The Academy is deeply saddened by the news that Anuradha Mathur (2021 Resident) has passed away. A renowned landscape architect, architect, and professor, she was always at the cutting edge of practice and pedagogy. Our thoughts are with her loved ones.
Color photograph of a cubelike twenty-first century glass building surrounded by a moat and standing near a city street

American Institute of Architects Awards

Among the winners of the American Institute of Architects’ 2022 Architecture Award include Tod Williams (1983 Fellow) and Billie Tsien (2000 Resident), Elizabeth Diller (1981 Affiliated Fellow), Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee (2017 Residents), and Stephan Kieran (1981 Fellow) and James Timberlake (1983 Fellow).
Detail of a book cover featuring words of the book's title, The Passion of Perpetua, in white against a crimson background; below that is a cropped black and white photograph showing the top few rungs of a ladder made from wooden sticks

Fellow and His Students Win Pedagogy Book Award

The Passion of Perpetua, a book that Thomas Hendrickson (2013 Fellow) cowrote and copublished with a group of his students at Stanford Online High School, won the 2022 Ladislaus J. Bolchazy Pedagogy Book Award from the Classical Association of the Middle West and South. The spirit of collaboration he experienced at AAR had a big influence on the work.
Color photograph of a white-walled museum installation of an actual hearse covered in black tar and peacock feathers; the automobile is situated in a cage made of steel poles, with mufflers in netting hanging above the car

Nari Ward Sculpture Heads to Baltimore

Nari Ward (2013 Fellow) first presented his monumental sculpture Peace Keeper at the 1995 Whitney Biennial. Re-created in 2020 for Grief and Grievance at the New Museum, the work was acquired by the Baltimore Museum of Art last month.
Color photograph of the profile of a light-skinned woman singing and standing at the waist-high ledge inside a museum; in the background are numerous museum visitors watching her performance and taking photos on their phone

Francesca Grilli Turns a Museum into Song

Francesca Grilli (2015 Italian Fellow) is turning a museum into song! For Family, to be first performed at the reopening of the Nasjonal Museet in Oslo in June, a chosen family (defined broadly) will sing the titles of artworks over a two-year period.
Detail of a book cover showing a Franc Palaia painting depicting the profile of a neanderthal-like man walking and pulling a luggage on wheels; the background depicts a multicolored graffitied wall

Franc Palaia’s Catalogue Raisonné

Franc Palaia (1986 Fellow) has published Wall Works: Frescoes, Photo-Sculpture, and Mixed Media 1973–2021. The book is a catalogue raisonné of forty-eight years of work that includes pieces he made during his time in Rome.
Detail of the over of the André Aciman book of essays Homo Irrealis, which depicts the back of a young dark skinned person with close-cropped dark hair rowing a small boat toward a marina with numerous docked boats, with multistory apartment buildings in the distance behind the marina

Award Nominations for Academy Writers

Two AAR authors are finalists for PEN America’s 2022 Literary Awards: André Aciman (2015 Resident) for his book of essays Homo Irrealis, and Kirstin Valdez Quade (2019 Fellow) for her novel The Five Wounds. Winners to be announced on February 28.
Detail of Domenico Ghirlandaio's painting of "Angel Appearing to Zacharias" showing four light-skinned men wearing long robes and hats in various shades of red

Christopher Celenza Examines the Origins of the Modern Humanities

To fully appreciate the importance of the humanities today, we must understand their history. A new book by former AAR Director Christopher Celenza (1994 Fellow), The Italian Renaissance and the Origins of the Modern Humanities: An Intellectual History, 1400–1800, charts the humanities’ evolution from the Italian Renaissance to the Enlightenment
Detail of a CD cover with the composer's name (Eric Nathan) and title (Missing Words) in white letters on a blue background on the right; on the left are thin strips of white paper, with about half of them containing words in German

Eric Nathan’s “Missing Words”

Missing Words, an ambitious cycle of works from 2014 Fellow Eric Nathan, balances structural impulses with the composer’s carefully considered approach to orchestration, harmony, and pitch. The CD and digital download will be available soon from New Focus Recordings.
Detail of a flat ceramic artwork titled "Pennsylvania Diamond Quilt" that consists of dozens of triangle shapes in terracotta individually painted with glazes of many different colors

Arcadia Exhibitions Presents Polly Apfelbaum

Handcrafted during an extended residency at Arcadia University, new ceramic works and site-specific wallpapers by 2013 Fellow Polly Apfelbaum will be in dialogue with a concurrent exhibition on the Pennsylvania folk artist and antiques dealer David Ellinger. Polly Apfelbaum: For the Love of Una Hale is on view February 3–April 17 at Arcadia Exhibitions.