Bvlgari and the American Academy in Rome today announced the launch of the new Affiliated Fellowship, which every other year invites the winner of the MAXXI Bvlgari Prize and an artist from the participants of Whitney Biennial to a four-month residency at the American Academy in Rome. This fellowship offers a dynamic international community that supports innovative artists, writers, and scholars living and working together.
The recipients of the inaugural Affiliated Fellowship are Monia Ben Hamouda, winner of the 2025 MAXXI Bvlgari Prize, and the recipient of the fellowship Clarissa Tossin, whose film Before the Volcanoes Sing was on view in the 2024 Whitney Biennial. The two artists will be in residence at the American Academy in Rome from March 17 to July 3, 2025, where they will live and work alongside the multidisciplinary community of the American Academy, fostering new opportunities for exchange and growth.
**Bvlgari Statement**
The Affiliated Fellowship is the first time the MAXXI – National Museum of 21st Century Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art have collaborated with a partner to provide residencies to promising emerging artists. The involvement of these institutions not only creates a new cultural bridge between Italy and the United States, but also provides the opportunity to welcome these artists into the American Academy in Rome’s community, where fellows and residents engage one another as they rethink and expand the boundaries of their disciplines, challenge assumptions, and cultivate ideas that resonate far beyond the institution’s walls. With one artist selected by the jurors of the MAXXI Bvlgari Prize, the premier Italian award dedicated to supporting and promoting new generations, and one artist selected from the Whitney Biennial, the longest-running exhibition of American art, the Affiliated Fellowship provides the winners with the opportunity to deeply engage with their art in collaboration with creatives from other disciplines.
“The collaboration between Bvlgari, the American Academy in Rome, MAXXI, and the Whitney represents a model of how diverse actors, from different countries, can work together to promote cultural growth. The American Academy has always been committed to supporting artistic creativity and is open to collaborating with other institutions, museums, and collections to contribute to the contemporary art discourse,” said Peter N. Miller, President and CEO of the American Academy in Rome.
Bringing these artists to Rome, a city that is home to Bvlgari since 1884 and where the American Academy was founded a decade later, will lead to the presentation of their work during the American Academy in Rome Open Studios, a free celebration that welcomes thousands of visitors in early June.