Features

During one four-day period in December, the full range and depth of artistic activity at the American Academy in Rome was on display, as an installation artist, a visual artist, an illustrator, two composers, and an oboist all presented their work.

In early December 2011 the American Academy's Villa Aurelia was the venue for an international conference entitled "Paradigm and Progeny: Roman Imperial Architecture and Its Legacy."

Beatriz del Cueto, FAIA, is a principal at Pantel del Cueto & Associates, a historic preservation consulting firm in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Historic Preservation and Conservation.

David A. Rubin is a partner at OLIN, a design firm in Philadelphia, PA, and the Garden Club of America Fellow in Landscape Architecture.

After four years of service as Drue Heinz Librarian, Rebecka Lindau is expanding the parameters of scholarly research online and positioning the Arthur and Janet C. Ross Library for the future in her new role as consultant on digital initiatives.

On Friday evening, 18 November until almost midnight on Sunday, the Villa Aurelia and Sala Aurelia were once again the locus for the Roman new music festival called Nuova Consonanza, in this case curated by Fausto Sebastiani in its 48th edition, and entitled Rimodulazione (Remodulation).

Every November in New York, the Academy embarks on a week-long sequence of meetings and events that brings together Trustees, Fellows, Trustees Emeriti, and longtime friends of the Academy.

On Friday 4 and Saturday 5 November 2011, a comprehensive conference at the American Academy’s splendid seventeenth-century Villa Aurelia highlighted the work of a dozen internationally renowned scholars of cultural heritage and cultural property.

Matt Donovan teaches in the Creative Writing and Literature Department at Santa Fe University of Art and Design and is the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize Fellow in Literature.

The “Glimpse Series” offers a closer view of the AAR community’s current Rome Prize winners by delving further into their studios or studies, their daily routines or work in progress. The scholarly and artistic work being pursued continues to be as varied as the fellowship recipients themselves. The following “Glimpse” focuses on Craig Martin, Associate Professor in History at Oakland University.

Approximately two hundred Romans and AAR community members filled the Cortile and the Art Gallery on the evening of Wednesday, October 19 to celebrate the opening of the photography exhibition Milton Gendel: Portraits, the second part of a two-part retrospective dedicated to the work of the long-time American expatriate in Rome that began on October 4 with the opening of the show Milton Gendel: una vita surreale (Milton Gendel: A Surreal Life) at the Museo Carlo Bilotti.

Norma W. Goldman, an archeological scholar, Latinist, and a longtime friend and Academy supporter, died on Friday, September 30, 2011. She was 89 years old. Goldman is survived by her son Mark, her daughter-in-law Carolyn, and her grandchildren Liam and Grace.

We recently sat down with Fritz Haeg, Garden Club of America Rome Prize Fellow for 2010–11, who discussed his experiences during his Fellowship year at the Academy and some of his upcoming projects.

A capacity crowd, comprised in equal parts of Roman new music aficionados and members of the AAR community, filled the Sala Aurelia on Monday night as composer Ada Gentile's contemporary music festival Nuovi Spazi Musicali began its thirty-second season.

On Monday, 26 September the Academy President Adele Chatfield-Taylor, FAAR’84, Director Christopher S. Celenza, FAAR’94 and members of the Friends of the Academy in Italy gathered for a reception at the Villa Aurelia to welcome the new class of Academy Fellows.

The American Academy in Rome inaugurates its fall exhibition calendar with a show by the prolific, young American artist Nate Lowman. Presented by Galleria Massimo de Carlo, the show is part of Three Amigos, a multivenue exhibition, which also includes the artists Dan Colen and Dash Snow.

Boris Biancheri, who was elected a trustee of the Academy in 1999, died of cancer on 19 July 2011, in Rome.

It was on 12 July 1921—precisely 90 years ago today—that noted architectural historian William L. MacDonald, FAAR’56 was born in Putnam, Connecticut. His death on 6 March 2010 deeply touched his numerous friends, colleagues, and former students, many of them linked by their connections with the American Academy in Rome.

Rome resident and beloved American Academy Trustee artist Cy Twombly died on July 5, 2011. He was 83.

The American Academy in Rome held its annual McKim Medal Gala at the Villa Aurelia in Rome on May 26, 2011, in honor of Italian artist Luigi Ontani, whom the Academy named the seventh McKim Medal laureate.