Features

AAR Trustees Emeriti came together in New York on Tuesday, April 19 for a reception with Academy Fellows.

AAR is pleased to announce that Aliza S. Wong, a professor of history and interim dean of the Honors College at Texas Tech University, has been appointed to be the Academy’s 25th Director.

Explore the American Academy in Rome at your fingertips on Bloomberg Connects, the free arts and culture app.

“The American Academy in Rome is dedicated to the open exchange of ideas as an essential part of a civil society. We condemn the invasion of Ukraine and stand in solidarity with people around the world whose liberty is at risk.”

By probing the similarities of these movements, an AAR conference on “Political Violence” deepened our understanding of historical events and gave us the context to understand current challenges facing democracy.

The thorny ethical issues behind missionary collections, including the question of how to—or how not to—display Indigenous objects, were the topic of a public workshop organized by Beatrice Falcucci and Gloria Bell that took place at AAR on February 1.

First held in 1923, the Classical Summer School was designed to give American high school Latin teachers direct experience with places in Italy associated with antiquity and return with a renewed enthusiasm for and greater understanding of their subjects.

The work displayed over the years chronicles a slower openness to the full sweep of artistic inspiration Rome has to offer, as well as to a wider range of artists from the United States.

The American Academy in Rome and The New York Public Library announced a new collaboration to advance scholarship in the arts and humanities and to partner on virtual and in-person programming events.

The exhibition, called The Landscape of Cosa, tells its story using photographs from two important collections in the Academy’s Photographic Archive.

COVID-19 restrictions in Rome earlier this year led a 2021 Fellow in literature to conceive of an experimental dinner, realized in July with the Rome Sustainable Food Project, that takes overlooked and discarded ingredients as inspiration.

On October 26, AAR will present the 2021 New York Gala honoring three individuals—scholar and administrator Mary Schmidt Campbell, writer John Guare, and artist Julie Mehretu—who advance the arts and humanities and exemplify outstanding achievements in the disciplines in which Rome Prize Fellowships, Italian Fellowships, and invited Residences are conferred.

As interim Director, Elizabeth 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.

Among the group of thirteen AAR Residents for the upcoming 2021–22 academic year will be the poet Natasha Trethewey, the art historian Dario Gamboni, and the filmmaker Ava DuVernay.

AAR and the University of Michigan Press have just released volume 65 of the Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome.

Margaret L. Laird, an independent scholar whose research focuses on Roman art and archaeology of the imperial period and a 2000 Rome Prize Fellow, has been appointed to a three-year term as editor of the Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome.

This year, the gift of “time and space to think and work” was awarded to thirty-five American and five Italian artists and scholars, who will each receive a stipend, workspace, and room and board at the Academy’s eleven-acre campus in Rome, starting in September 2021.

Leslie Cozzi (2018 Fellow) interviews the artist Tomaso De Luca (2017 Italian Fellow), whose work can be seen in Rome at the Quadriennale d’arte and the MAXXI Bvlgari Prize 2020.

Marla Stone, a professor of modern European history at Occidental College and a 1996 Rome Prize Fellow in Post-Classical Humanistic Studies, has been appointed AAR’s next Andrew W. Mellon Humanities Professor.

AAR is beyond grateful to reopen for yet another season and welcome our new class of Rome Prize winners and Italian Fellows to the Eternal City.

The American Academy in Rome is pleased to announce its slate of Residents for 2021.

The American Academy in Rome remembers the artist and 2005 Fellow Jackie Saccoccio, who died on December 4.

Photographer Carole Raddato has gifted the core of her vast collection—some 30,000 digital images—to the AAR Library to ensure its long-term preservation and continued access to scholars.

The Library of the American Academy in Rome has reopened its doors to scholars.

Marilyn Hernández, deputy chief development officer for individual giving at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is the Academy’s new Vice President for Development.

Sanjaya Thakur, associate professor and chair of the Classics Department at Colorado College, has been appointed director of AAR’s Classical Summer School.

Encounters I and II are part of a year-long series of events commemorating the institution’s 125th anniversary. The exhibitions trace only a few representative examples of the many interdisciplinary encounters fostered by the Academy from 1948 to the present.

This year, fellowships were awarded to twenty-two North American and two Italian artists and scholars, who will each receive a stipend, workspace, and room and board for a period of five to seven months at the Academy’s eleven-acre campus in Rome.

In the midst of a global pandemic that has disproportionately affected communities of color, racially motivated violence is a reminder that systemic racism still persists.

Since 1894, the Academy has been a nurturing home to a vibrant community of hundreds of distinguished scholars and artists. In this issue, we celebrate AAR’s 125th anniversary by looking back at some of the Fellows and their work.