Features

A screenshot of an image of a webpage with a search bar and several collections of digital images

A New Digital Humanities Center

The American Academy in Rome launches a new-and-improved DHC.

Color photograph of a tour guide leading a dozen or so people on the ground inside an ancient Roman ruin

Classical Summer School Centennial

This year AAR’s Classical Summer School, founded in 1923, marks its centennial. If you participated in the program, we would love to hear from you.

Color photograph of about a dozen people in an Academy studio, looking at an unseen person giving a presentation off camera; architectural drawings are pinned to the walls behind them

Dispatch from Thailand: Stephen Harby

Stephen Harby has made a bequest intention to endow a Rome Prize Fellowship and Residency in architecture, in memory of the architect Charles Moore.

From the Archives: National Academies and the Postwar Rome Prize

To celebrate the opening of Roma, a Portrait at Palazzo delle Esposizioni, which celebrates the foreign cultural academies in the Eternal City, we republish this article by Denise R. Costanzo (2015 Fellow) on the approaches to classical and modern architecture at those institutes.

Color photograph of the head and shoulders of a light skinned man wearing a dark blazer and white shirt; he is positioned in front of a shelf of books with colorful spines as he smiles and looks at the camera

Peter N. Miller Named New AAR President

Peter N. Miller, a respected historian and educator who is a leading voice on the continued importance of the humanities, will serve as the next President and CEO of the American Academy in Rome.

Announcing the 2023–24 Rome Prize Winners and Italian Fellows

The American Academy in Rome has announced the winners of the 2023–24 Rome Prize and Italian Fellowships.

color photograph of a library room with books on shelves to the left and a roman sculpture of a small head on a pedestal on the right

NEH Awards Over $700,000 in Grants to AAR

Today the National Endowment for the Humanities announced it will award a $472,850 challenge grant to AAR for an expansion of the Arthur and Janet C. Ross Library into Villa Chiaraviglio.

Whitfield Lovell Donates Two Portraits to the Academy

Whitfield Lovell (2019 Resident) has generously given AAR two striking portraits of two of the first Black Fellows for the Academy Bar: Ulysses Kay and June Jordan

Black and white screeshot of a video depicting a dark skinned woman sitting in a garden, wearing a dark blazer, and smiling at the camera

Fellows in Focus: Monica Rhodes

Monica Rhodes talks about the importance of involving communities when making decisions on how to best conserve a historical site.

Public Space as a Form of Expression

Five artists and designers discussed the impact, positive or negative, that public art has on the built environment, drawing from their personal experiences and professional projects.

Color photograph of a light skinned woman standing with her arms crossed and smiling at the camera in front of a fuscia wall

Ilaria Puri Purini Appointed Andrew Heiskell Arts Director

Ilaria Puri Purini, a curator and art historian currently based in London, has been appointed as the eighth Andrew Heiskell Arts Director at the American Academy in Rome, to serve a three-year term beginning this summer.

June Jordan & Ulysses Kay: Faces That Changed the Academy

As we close out Black History Month this year, we share a video celebrating two of the earliest African American winners of the Rome Prize: Ulysses Kay and June Jordan.

Color photograph of a mix of people standing in two rows in a courtyard; everyone is posed and looking at the camera

What Makes A Citizen

On February 9–10, the Academy hosted a conference that brought together scholars from the United States, Canada, Switzerland, Britain, and Italy to analyze and debate the meaning of identity in Italy and the US from the early nineteenth century to today.

Black and white video still depicting an Asian man wearing glasses and smiling off camera; overlaid on the image are white letters that read Fellows in Focus, Tung-Hui Hu, Literature

Fellows in Focus: Tung-Hui Hu

For a poetry book in progress, 2023 Rome Prize Fellow Tung-Hui Hu is looking into why humans have punished objects and animals as if they were people.

Color photograph the main wall of the Sistine Chapel showing Michelangelo's Last Judgment

The Sistine Chapel at Your Fingertips

The Academy acquired a copy of a rare collection of books that presents one-to-one-scale reproductions of every fresco in the Sistine Chapel.

Color photograph of people milling about an art gallery, talking with each other and looking at photographs hung on the white walls

Winter Open Studios Highlights Recent Work by Fellows

More than eight hundred people passed through the American Academy in Rome’s doors for the annual Winter Open Studios.

Color photographs of solar panels on a flat room, with the tops of trees in the background

The Academy Goes Solar

A new photovoltaic power generation system, installed on the roof of the McKim, Mead & White Building, is producing clean energy for the Academy.

Black and white photograph of the heads and torsos of three light skinned men posing for the camera: a tall man in the center wears a jacket and tie; the two shorter men flanking him wear jackets and bowties and sport mustaches

In Memoriam: Richard Trythall

Richard Trythall, a composer and pianist who was an important figure in the American Academy in Rome’s musical history, died on December 21, 2022, at the age of 83.

Black and white video still of the head and torso of a smiling light skinned woman with blond hair sitting in a chair in a garden; superimposed onto her is a text reading "Fellows in Focus: Sarah Beckmann, Ancient Studies"

Fellows in Focus: Sarah Beckmann

Sarah Beckmann, our 2023 Andrew Heiskell Rome Prize Fellow in ancient studies, talks about her project, The Villa in Late Antiquity: Roman Ideals and Local Identities.

Two color photographs placed side by side: on the left is an olive-skinned man seen from the waste up; he wears a dark blazer over a white shirt and looks at the cameera; on the right is the head and torso of an olived-skinned man wearing an open collar shirt and a beard and looking at the camera

Inaugural Getty Foundation Affiliated Fellows Are Announced

The American Academy in Rome has named the winners of the inaugural Getty Foundation Affiliated Fellowships: Zakarya Khelif and Emre Gönlügür.

Color photograph of the exterior of a bookshop in Rome, books on shelves as seen through an open door and closed window

American Academy in Rome’s 20 Best Books to Give This Season

As the holiday season fast approaches, AAR has assembled a diverse array of books by or featuring our Fellows and Residents.

Color photograph of the head and torsos of three light skinned people (two men flanking a woman) smiling at the camera as they stand in an outdoor desert location in Iraq wearing flak vests and holding helmets

Dispatch from Turkey: Catching Up with C. Brian Rose

A newly announced bequest intention by C. Brian Rose (1992 Fellow, 2012 Resident, and Trustee Emeritus) will support residencies across disciplines in the humanities.

Color photograph of a table with several plates of hors d'oeurves, with three people standing behind the table in a garden

Food and Fellowship: The Rome Sustainable Food Project Celebrates Fifteen Years

This year marked the fifteen-year anniversary of the Rome Sustainable Food Project, a milestone that was celebrated at a Friends of the Academy garden party on June 12.

Four men of varying skin tones standing in front of a step and repeat

AAR Raises $1 Million at the 2022 New York Gala

Nearly three hundred guests gathered at the American Academy in Rome’s New York Gala, held at Cipriani 25 Broadway on November 2.

Is Weird Medieval Guys the Best Account on Twitter?

A viral Twitter account called Weird Medieval Guys is spreading joy through the unlikely source of European medieval art.

Detail of figure 17 of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown’s book Learning from Las Vegas, showing a Las Vega postcard centered on a closeup of a famous map of Rome

Italy Is (Only) Almost All Right

Learning from Las Vegas gleefully pairs the capital of both Christendom and classical pieties with Sin City, in all its cheap, tawdry vulgarity. How? The authors justify Vegas first: “learning from everything” in a nonjudgmental way (initially) is “a way of being revolutionary for an architect.”

Color photograph of a light skinned man wearing a suit and tie and standing in the interior courtyard of a building in Rome

Mark Robbins to Step Down as President and CEO in July 2023

Academy President and CEO Mark Robbins announced today that he will step down at the conclusion of the academic year, in July 2023, following nearly ten years in the role.

Twenty Residents to Visit AAR in 2022–23

The American Academy in Rome is pleased to announce its slate of twenty Residents for the 2022–23 academic year.

a minimal digital schematic architectural rendering of an office conference room with chairs, long table, and bookshelves

American Academy in Rome’s New York Offices to Move to West Chelsea

The American Academy in Rome is moving its New York offices to the Dia Art Foundation building at 535 West 22nd Street in October.

Color image of two separate photos side by side. On the left is a man with a beard and a black shirt standing in an artist's studio, with a yellow and black graphic work on the work table in front of him; on the right is a woman standing in a gallery next to hre abstract ceramic relief sculpture hanging on the white wall behind her

New Mordant Family/Australia Council Affiliated Fellows: Reko Rennie and Angela Valamanesh

Two celebrated Australian artists, Reko Rennie and Angela Valamanesh, are the latest recipients of the Mordant Family/Australia Council Affiliated Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome.