We are pleased to announce the American Academy in Rome has selected Elizabeth Rodini as the interim Director for the upcoming academic year in Rome. Rodini will head a team of talented scholars with Marla Stone joining as the new Andrew W. Mellon Humanities Professor and Lindsay Harris as interim Andrew Heiskell Arts Director. This team represents broad experience at the Academy, which will enrich the community of incoming Fellows and assure a smooth transition with Rome staff, the Board of Trustees, and the wider Roman community. The Academy will benefit from their scholarly and managerial skill, and we are pleased to have this gifted team in place.
Elizabeth Rodini is currently Andrew Heiskell Arts Director and succeeds Director Avinoam Shalem (2016 Resident), who returns to Columbia University to teach this fall. Rodini came to the Academy two years ago from Johns Hopkins University, where she taught art history and museology and was the founding director of the university’s Program in Museums and Society. Rodini has broad curatorial and programming experience and is the author most recently of Gentile Bellini’s Portrait of Sultan Mehmed II: Lives and Afterlives of an Iconic Image.
Marla Stone, a professor of modern European history at Occidental College in Los Angeles and a 1996 Rome Prize Fellow in what is now modern Italian studies, has been appointed the next Andrew W. Mellon Humanities Professor at the American Academy in Rome. A historian of modern Italy with a focus on fascism, authoritarianism, and genocide, Stone works on the intersection of ideology, culture, and the state. Succeeding Lynne Lancaster (2002 Fellow), who has served in the role since 2018, Stone begins her three-year term in late August.
Lindsay Harris will serve as the interim Andrew Heiskell Arts Director. Harris is a historian of nineteenth- and twentieth-century photography and a 2014 Fellow in modern Italian studies. She served as Andrew W. Mellon Professor from 2014 to 2018. Harris curated the Academy exhibition Matera Imagined/Matera Immaginata: Photography and a Southern Italian Town and most recently was a lecturer in the history of photography at LUISS University in Rome.
“We are excited to have the members of this remarkable interim team bring their exceptional talents to the Academy community,” said AAR President Mark Robbins (1997 Fellow), “and we are grateful to Avinoam and Lynne for their dedication to the Academy during their tenure.”
A search for the next Director of the Academy will commence this fall.
American Academy in Rome
Established in 1894, the American Academy in Rome (AAR) is America’s oldest overseas center for independent studies and advanced research in the arts and humanities. The Academy has evolved to become a more global and diverse residential setting for artists and scholars living and working in Rome. The community includes a wide range of scholarly and artistic disciplines, with a composition that is representative of the United States and is fully engaged with Rome, Italy, and international exchange. The support provided by the Academy to Rome Prize and Italian Fellows and invited Residents helps further the impact of the arts and humanities.