Features

Aaron S. Allen is assistant professor of musicology in the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the Paul Mellon Post-Doctoral Rome Prize Fellow in Modern Italian Studies.

Jennifer R. Davis is assistant professor in the Department of History at the Catholic University of America and the Millicent Mercer Johnsen Post-Doctoral Rome Prize Fellow in Medieval Studies.

The Academy kicked off the annual Trustees Week in Rome with a series of highly anticipated events from 28 May until 31 May, beginning with the 8th edition of the McKim Medal Gala.

On Monday 28 May 2012, the American Academy in Rome awarded the McKim Medal to internationally renowned conductor, Maestro Riccardo Muti, in honor of his significant accomplishments and contributions to classical music throughout his career.

The splendid high-ceilinged studios in AAR’s McKim, Mead & White Building and its pavilions are supposedly a legacy from the time when Fellows designed colossal or equestrian statues. Fellows don’t do that so much anymore, but the soaring spaces inside studios remain, and can be both an inspiration and a physical and psychological challenge to their inhabitants.

Corey Brennan (1988 Fellow) completes his term as Mellon Professor in Charge of the Humanities this month and has been an unflagging source of erudition, energy, and enthusiasm over the past three years.

Elliott Green is a painter from New York and the Jules Guerin Rome Prize Fellow in Visual Arts.

Despite the fact that it largely came into place more than a century ago, it has to rank as one of the least-known small museums in Rome. But now thanks to the digital age, the antiquities collection of the American Academy in Rome is finally coming into its own.

On Wednesday, April 25, 2012, the American Academy in Rome awarded its highest honor—the Centennial Medal—to the artist William Kentridge (2011 Resident) and the theater director Peter Sellars for their contributions to art and culture.

The American Academy in Rome doesn’t just nurture preeminent artists and established scholars – it also offers a select group of college students a unique pre-grad school experience.

Heidi Wendt is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Religious Studies and Classics at Brown University, and the Emeline Hill Richardson Pre-Doctoral Rome Prize Fellow in Ancient Studies.

On Friday afternoon in the courtyard of the Casa delle Letterature, in Rome’s historic center, an audience sat under the orange trees listening to poetry being read aloud in Italian and in English. A fountain contributed its own quiet music, as falling water caused the maidenhair fern to tremble; from time to time, gulls from the nearby Tiber laughed overhead; and church bells loudly called people to evening prayer. But for those who were listening, nothing really broke the spell of a beautiful May afternoon, and of poetry itself.

The American Academy in Rome’s Janet and Arthur Ross Rome Prize Ceremony to announce the winners of the 2012–13 Fellowships took place on April 26, 2012, at the Harmonie Club in New York.

The American Academy in Rome congratulates the winners of the 116th annual Rome Prize Competition.

On Thursday 18 April 2012, a capacity crowd braved a rainy vernal evening to attend the latest installment of the American Academy in Rome’s Conversations That Matter on the topic of “Italy Today.”

Lonn Combs is principal architect at EASTON + COMBS in New York, assistant professor at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute School of Architecture, and the Gorham P. Stevens Rome Prize Fellow in Architecture.

In New York City, the Academy hosted an event to launch Mona Talbott’s new book, Zuppe, and to celebrate the fifth year of the Rome Sustainable Food Project, a program that has stirred a delicious revolution in institutional cooking by providing organic, local, sustainable meals at the American Academy in Rome.

For ten days in March, Andrew W. Mellon Professor-in-Charge Corey Brennan (1988 Fellow) led a record-sized group of twenty-eight members of the AAR community on an itinerary to Istanbul and the Aegean coast of Turkey.

Every year, the American Academy community comprises a vivid cross-section of the best in contemporary art and scholarship, its exact texture determined by the particular interests and abilities of the Fellows, Residents, and Affiliated and Visiting Artists and Scholars who assemble on the Janiculum.

Lei Liang is an associate professor of music at the University of California, San Diego, and the Elliott Carter Rome Prize Fellow in Musical Composition