The American Academy in Rome’s Centenary Celebration Dinner took place at the Plaza Hotel in New York on April 13, 2011. That evening, members of the Academy community and guests gathered to honor the world-renowned architect and Academy Trustee Emeritus, Frank Gehry, and the distinguished scholar and New York Public Library President and Academy Trustee, Paul LeClerc, for their contributions to the worlds of art and scholarship. Chaired by Trustee Mercedes T. Bass and her husband Sid R. Bass, the Centenary Celebration Dinner was attended by over 380 guests.
The remarks were the highlight of the evening. Edward Norton and Founding Director of the Signature Theatre Company James Houghton presented the award to Gehry, and Trustee and Henry Putnam Professor of History at Princeton University Anthony Grafton presented Paul LeClerc with his award.
Edward Norton recalled growing up hearing his grandfather Jim Rouse, a renowned developer and urban planner, talk about cities, architecture, and urban planning. Despite pressure to work with more seasoned architects, Rouse decided to contract Gehry, who even as a very young architect stood out for his innovative out of the box thinking, to build the Rouse Company Headquarters in Columbia, Maryland. “It was a building unlike others. I remember as a child wondering why other buildings weren’t like my grandad’s office building, why they weren’t more interesting, more exciting.” recalled Norton. “It took me decades actually to come to grips with the fact that CEOs in other companies did not have a glass office in the lobby so that they could wave at people as they entered the building, which Frank had built for my grandfather. And so forty years later to have the opportunity with the theater company that Jim started and I was an early member of—to build three theaters in New York with Frank and to have worked with Frank on a project is really one of the great privileges and experiences in the wheel of life that I have had as an artist in New York these last twenty years.”
Describing Gehry, Norton said: “He fills you with a sense of possibility and magic.”
In accepting the award Gehry said: “A lot of my respected colleagues, including Michael Graves and artists like Ed Ruscha, did spend time at the Academy, and a lot of others that I know and respect over the years, and it did make an imprint on their lives and was important to them and to all of us.”
Gehry recalled his experiences at the Academy: “While I was there I met a couple of art historians—like Irving and Marilyn Lavin—who still are part of the club and that friendship and professional relationship has lasted for many years maybe twenty, twenty-five years, and I think that kind of interaction and that kind of spirit and that kind of evolution that comes out of these fellowships at the Academy are very special in our world, and I’m very proud to accept an award on behalf of those people. Thank you.”
In his remarks Grafton praised LeClerc for his numerous achievements since taking the helm of the library in 1993, including building the endowment and rebuilding the central library and its branches, introducing exceptional public programs and exhibitions, and bringing the New York Public Library into the digital age. Grafton stated: “Augustus came to a humble wooden Rome and left it marble. Paul came to an analogue New York Public Library and has left it digital.” Describing LeClerc Grafton said, “Above all, he has always known that what matters most are the readers and the users.... He has always worried about what the library has meant to its readers, and he has meant that sincerely.”
In accepting his award LeClerc reminded the audience why we support the Academy: “We do so because we place an exceptionally high value on humanistic learning, on research, on discovery, on the interpretation or the reinterpretation of the past, on supporting some of the most brilliant scholars—young and maybe not so young—of our country. We support the American Academy in Rome because we know that learning flourishes in a community where ideas are not only formed but challenged and refined through conversation in a community of scholars and artists.... When we support the AAR and its Fellows, we underwrite what I think and hope are eternal values of Western civilizations.”
The evening culminated with AAR President Adele Chatfield-Taylor’s announcement that the Academy had surpassed its $70 million campaign goal to secure the Academy’s future.
The Centenary Celebration marks one hundred years as the Academy we know today. Trustees of the American Academy in Rome and the Managing Committee of the American School of Classical Studies in Rome voted to consolidate so that they could together more effectively advance the study, investigation and practice of both the arts and the humanities. Three months later, in May 1911, the Academy took possession of Villa Aurelia, the bequest of Clara Jessup Heyland.