Features

The American Academy in Rome’s Casa Rustica (in the present Bass Garden) occupies the precise site where, on Thursday, April 14, 1611, Galileo made his first demonstration to a learned audience in Rome of his new invention, named on this occasion as the “telescope.”

The American Academy in Rome is pleased to announce the winners of the 2011–12 Rome Prize.

The American Academy in Rome has its fair share of traditions, but one of the most hallowed is its annual Spring Trip for Fellows.

Paul Rudy is the recipient of the 2010-11 Elliott Carter Rome Prize in Musical Composition. He arrived in Rome last September from Kansas City where he is a Professor at the Conservatory of Music and Dance at the University of Missouri.

On Monday 4 April at 9 PM, the Sala Aurelia at the American Academy’s Villa Aurelia will be transformed into a theater space and will resonate with the sights and sounds of the Caribbean, as Nobel Laureate and William B. Hart Poet-in-Residence Derek Walcott leads a cast including actors Wendell Manwarren, Giovanna Bozzolo, and Dean Atta in the world premiere reading of his new play Moon-Child (Ti Jean in Concert).

To mark the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first demonstration of his telescope on the site of the Casa Rustica, the Academy is offering three events, starting on Thursday 7 April 2011 (5 PM), with an installment of the AAR’s “Conversations That Matter” series.

Porta San Pancrazio is one of the western gates of Rome that opens along its Aurelian Walls. For centuries it has served as a main conduit for traffic to Rome that passes along the Via Aurelia Antica.

The Trustees of the American Academy in Rome request the pleasure of your company at the Janet and Arthur Ross Rome Prize Ceremony announcing the winners of the 2011–12 Rome Prize.

Jeremy Mende is wrapping up his six-month fellowship in design at the American Academy in Rome. As he heads home to San Francisco, signs of Jeremy’s work remain behind, quite literally, all over Rome.

Thirty years after the Russian exile and Nobel Laureate poet Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996) was a Resident at the American Academy in Rome in 1981, AAR will present “A Tribute to Joseph Brodsky” on March 17–18, 2011.

Why do so many Italians leave their country, and what draws them to America? Four student filmmakers from L’Accademia dell’ Immagine in L’Aquila—displaced by the devastating April 2009 earthquake that struck Abruzzo—explored this question as they found themselves completing their studies in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Dike Blair is the 2010–11 Chuck Close Rome Prize Fellow in the Visual Arts. He is a painter, sculptor, and writer as well as a senior critic in the Department of Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design.

In July 2010, Karl Kirchwey (1995 Fellow) began his three-year term as Andrew Heiskell Arts Director for the School of Fine Arts at the American Academy in Rome. In an email conversation, Pamela Hovland (2006 Fellow) talked with Kirchwey about his return to the Academy, the influence his Fellowship year had on his work, his current reading list, and what he does when he cannot sleep at 3:00 AM in Rome.

Laurie Rush is the Booth Family Rome Prize Fellow in Historic Preservation and Conservation, and is the first to be featured in our 2011 "Glimpse" series.

The American Academy in Rome, in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute of New York, will present a reading and international conference on Eugenio Montale and Italian Poetry in the Twentieth Century on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy.

Marco Raparelli (born in Rome, 1975; lives and works in Rome) is one of the few artists in Italy who has used the style typical of comic illustration to create his own personal visual language.

Following a successful run at Rome’s Museo Carlo Bilotti last June, the exhibition Philip Guston, Roma will be on view at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, from February 12 to May 15, 2011.

The American Academy opened its doors, windows, and communal spaces to a public of more than four hundred on Thursday 20 January 2011 to highlight the work of fifteen of its Italian Affiliated Fellows in the Arts in a show called ACCADEMIA ° STANZE ° PERSONE.

The Trustees, Fellows, and Staff of the American Academy in Rome mourn the loss of Christina G. Huemer, beloved Drue Heinz Librarian Emerita and spirited leader of the Arthur and Janet C. Ross Library for fifteen years (1993–2008).

The Scharoun Ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, one of the world’s leading chamber music ensembles, returned to the American Academy in Rome for a series of three concerts at its Villa Aurelia on Friday-Sunday January 14-16, 2011.