The Fondazione Sicilia and the American Academy in Rome have announced the selection of the inaugural Fondazione Sicilia Affiliated Fellowships at the American Academy in Rome following a competitive selection process. In the category of visual arts, the artist duo Antonella Genuardi and Leonardo Ruta won. In the humanities competition, the scholar Gaia Nuccio was victorious.
Genuardi and Ruta stood out for their profoundly collaborative practice—an approach that aligns with the Academy’s mission and values. Their project, entitled Le trombe d’oro della solarità (The golden trumpets of sunlight), focuses on Pierluigi Nervi’s architecture and technical design. This topic is particularly relevant to Rome, a city that boasts some of Nervi’s most innovative structures and that also houses his archive, at the MAXXI Museum.
Nuccio’s project, The Roman apprenticeship of Sicilian architects (1650–1750), a passport to professional success, represents an innovative and interdisciplinary look at architectural exchanges and mutual fertilizations between Rome and Sicily during the turbulent end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century. Nuccio’s work will offer critical insights on issues of lay and ecclesiastical patronage, in urban planning and in the professional training of early modern Italian architects.
The Fondazione Sicilia Affiliated Fellows will join the Academy for eight weeks during the 2022–23 academic year and will form a part of the Academy’s diverse, international community of artists, scholars, architects, composers, and writers. The Academy looks forward to having Genuardi, Ruta, and Nuccio at the Academy, and we look forward to the exceptional opportunity they will offer our community to learn about Sicilian culture, thanks to the generous support of the Fondazione Sicilia.
About the Fondazione Sicilia
The Fondazione Sicilia is a private foundation that aims to promote the growth and socioeconomic development of Sicily through projects in many different fields, including education, training, artistic and cultural heritage, and scientific research, along with the visual arts, performance art, and literature.