For the third year, the American Academy in Rome marks Black History Month with a program exploring histories of power, memory, and justice, alongside the lived experiences and trajectories of Black bodies across space and time. This year’s initiative emphasizes institutional dialogue and site-responsive approaches, examining how knowledge is produced, contested, and reimagined through place and collaboration, while highlighting the participation of some of our 2025-26 Rome Prize Winners in programs across Italy. At the heart of the Academy’s program is a featured event on February 17 with Tony Cokes (2023 Carla Fendi Foundation Fellow and 2026 Roy Lichtenstein Artist in Residence), one of the most influential voices in contemporary art and media practice, presenting texts. tracks. (not an exhibition). Organized by Johanne Affricot, AAR Curator-at-Large, the event will present a series of modular installations of Cokes’s current and past works, alongside a work-in-progress documentation tracing his long-standing engagement with institutional power, state violence, cultural production, and the representation of race, gender, and identity. Through the sampling and recombination of visual, textual, and musical fragments—including pop music, film footage, journalism, critical theory, and social media—Cokes’s practice interrogates the intersections of politics, culture and power.
Beyond the Academy, AAR is collaborating on Black History Month Florence (XI edition) at the Murate Art District, opening February 12, 2026, a program developed in direct dialogue with the Academy. Framed by the theme Common Time, the program features 2026 Rome Prize Fellows T.J. Dedeaux-Norris and Heather Hart, alongside archival material related to writer William Demby, an influential Black artist in post-war Italy, who was affiliated with the Academy in the 1950s. A focused exhibition based on Demby’s play—produced in 2025 in collaboration with Melanie Masterton (2015 Terra Foundation Affiliated Fellow), Shelleen Green, and Kevin Jerome Everson (2002 Fellow) —also forms part of the program. The Academy’s involvement links Rome and Florence through shared questions of memory, confinement, and transformation.
Audiences are also invited to follow the Academy on social media for coverage of the opening and related talks, including events at NYU Florence with Tameka Baba (2026 Fellow) on February 24 and at Stanford University Florence with Paula Gaither (2026 Fellow) on February 25.
In Rome, AAR is collaborating with Temple University Rome to present and promote Open to Interpretation: Material, Process, and the Design of Public Place, an exhibition by Tameka Baba (2026 Fellow), on view February 3–25, 2026 that explores the city of Rome through Baba’s engagement with Piazza del Popolo, featuring prints, drawings, photographs, and tapestry. Public programs—including roundtable discussions with 2026 Fellows Cory Henry, Heather Hart, T.J. Dedeaux-Norris, Karen Lutksy and Sean Burkholder, Heather Scott Peterson, and Jennifer Bornstein and a weaving workshop led by Baba—invite audiences to engage with the work through hands-on experience and interdisciplinary dialogue, highlighting the ongoing work of the 2026 cohort and extending the Academy’s intellectual community into the public sphere.
Together, these initiatives position Black History Month not as a singular moment, but as a collective, multi-sited effort—connecting artists, scholars, archives, and institutions in an ongoing exploration of history, power, and transformation through creative and scholarly practice.