American Classics

Ovid: Death and Transfiguration

American Classics
AAR Lecture Room
McKim, Mead & White Building
Via Angelo Masina, 5
Rome, Italy
Conference/Symposium
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Ovid: Death and Transfiguration

This event is part of the series New Work in the Arts & Humanities: American Classics.

The title of this conference reflects the fact that 2017 marks the two thousandth anniversary of the poet’s own death. This is a conventional reckoning: nothing in Ovid's poetry can be dated after AD 17, but we have no external evidence about when he died, and the alludes both to this and to other uncertainties regarding death as a theme in Ovid’s poetry. In his love poetry, Ovid does not share the often morbid fascination with death that characterizes his elegiac predecessors, Tibullus and Propertius. In his later poetry, death takes different forms, including bodily metamorphosis, literary canonization, and political exile. The conference will focus on these and related aspects, including the earliest stages of Ovid’s posthumous reception.

The conference is organized in collaboration with Sapienza Università di Roma. The first day (March 9) of the three-day conference will be held at the American Academy in Rome. The second and third days (March 10–11) at Sapienza Università di Roma.

March 9, 2017
American Academy in Rome
Via Angelo Masina, 5
Sala Conferenze

March 10, 2017
Sapienza Università di Roma
Piazzale Aldo Moro, 5
Odeion, Facoltà di Letteree Filosofia

March 11, 2017
Sapienza Università di Roma
Piazzale Aldo Moro, 5
​Aula I, Facoltà di Letteree Filosofia

Participants: Alessandro BARCHIESI, Bettina BERGMANN, Francesca Romana BERNO, Alessandro BETORI, Emma BUCKLEY, Sergio CASALI, Andrea CUCCHIARELLI, Jacqueline FABRE-SERRIS, Joseph FARRELL, Laurel FULKERSON, Luigi GALASSO, Philip HARDIE, Stephen HINDS, Alison KEITH, Florence KLEIN, Mario LABATE, Giuseppe LA BUA, John MILLER, Damien NELIS, Ellen OLIENSIS, Bettina REITZ JOOSE, Gianpiero ROSATI, Alessandro SCHIESARO, Alison SHARROCK, Thea THORSEN, Katharina VOLK, Anke WALTER

Papers will be given in English and Italian. On March 9, you can watch this event live at https://livestream.com/aarome.

The organizers are: Joe Farrell, University of Pennsylvania (2013 Resident); Alessandro Schiesaro, University of Manchester; Damien Nelis, University of Geneva; and John Miller, University of Virginia.

Ann Hamilton

American Classics
Villa Aurelia
Largo di Porta S. Pancrazio, 1
Rome, Italy
Lecture/Conversation
Ann Hamilton

This event is part of the series New Work in the Arts & Humanities: American Classics.

Ann Hamilton, a visual artist internationally recognized for the sensory surround of her large-scale multimedia installations, investigates the places and forms underpinning live, tactile, visceral and face-to-face experiences in a media saturated world. Her work responds to the architecture and social history of specific sites, often centering on the ephemeral acts of reading, speaking and listening. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, Hamilton is the Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Art at Ohio State University, where she has served on the faculty since 2001. She represented the United States at the 1991 Bienal de São Paulo and at the 1999 Venice Biennale, and has exhibited extensively around the world.

In this talk, Hamilton will discuss a selection of projects, with special focus on her text concordances in works such as stylus (2010) and in recent photographs.

Ann Hamilton is the Roy Lichtenstein Artist in Residence at the American Academy in Rome in the spring of 2017.

The lecture will be held in English.

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Richard Gluckman – Space Framed

American Classics
AAR Lecture Room
McKim, Mead & White Building
Via Angelo Masina, 5
Rome, Italy
Lecture/Conversation
Richard Gluckman - Space Framed

This event is part of the series New Work in the Arts & Humanities: American Classics.

As part of the American Academy’s ongoing series of events exploring “American Classics,” celebrated architect Richard Gluckman will discuss the work of his firm as it is represented by interventions into historic structures, from the first project for the dia art foundation, 524 w 24th street in 1985, to current work at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, constructed between 1895 and 1915. Projects included will range from the proposed plan for a museum in Sevilla’s ‘Atarazanas’, a ship building factory from the 13th century, to the Andy Warhol Museum, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art Perelman Wing.

Gluckman will discuss Reyner Banham’s notion of the origin of modern architecture from late 19th to early 20th century American industrial architecture as posited in ‘Concrete Atlantis’ with regard to the ‘Daylight Factory’ of Henry Ford’s River Rouge plant from 1917. This building type was re-invigorated in the 1980’s when its usefulness as a venue for large scale, site-specific work was exploited.

Richard Gluckman is the William A. Bernoudy Architect in Residence at the American Academy in Rome in the spring of 2017 and Principal at Gluckman Tang Architects in New York.

The lecture will be held in English. You can watch this event live at https://livestream.com/aarome.

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Susan Meiselas – Prince Street Girls Revisited

American Classics
AAR Lecture Room
McKim, Mead & White Building
Via Angelo Masina, 5
Rome, Italy
Lecture/Conversation
Susan Meiselas - Prince Street Girls Revisited

This event is part of the series New Work in the Arts & Humanities: American Classics.

In this lecture, award-winning photographer Susan Meiselas will discuss her reconsideration of a photographic series she produced in the late 1970s, Prince Street Girls. As Meiselas explains:

In 1975, nearly thirty-five years ago, I was riding a bicycle through my neighborhood in Little Italy when suddenly a blast of light flashed into my eyes, blinding me for a moment. Its source was a group of girls fooling around with a mirror trying to reflect the sun on my face. That was the day I met the Prince Street Girls, the name I gave the group that hung out on the nearby corner almost every day. The girls were from small Italian-American families and they were almost all related. I was the stranger who didn’t belong. Little Italy was mostly for Italians then.

The project Prince Street Girls began as a series of incidental encounters. They’d see me coming and call out, “Take a picture! Take a picture!” At the beginning I was making pictures just to share with them. If we met in the market or at the pizza parlor, they would reluctantly introduce me to their parents but I was never invited into any of their homes. I was their secret friend, and my loft became a kind of hideaway when they dared to cross the street, which their parents had forbidden.

One of the Prince Street Girls, Pebbles, moved from New York to Naples and now has a number of grandchildren. She is the starting point of my revisiting the Prince Street Girls.

Meiselas is the Henry Wolf Photographer in Residence at the American Academy in Rome in the spring of 2017.

The lecture will be held in English.

Thomas E. Crow – Rauschenberg and the Need for Myth

American Classics
AAR Lecture Room
McKim, Mead & White Building
Via Angelo Masina, 5
Rome, Italy
Lecture/Conversation
Thomas E. Crow - Rauschenberg and the Need for Myth

This event is part of the series New Work in the Arts & Humanities: American Classics.

Robert Rauschenberg spent a crucial period as a young artist in Rome and Florence. Of the works he produced at that moment, most were pitched into the Arno after a single bad review. The imprint of that sojourn took some years to re-merge, doing so when the demands of his art awakened a latent attachment to classical myth, which he rendered through outwardly, almost aggressively anti-classical means. The origins and outcomes of that paradox will be the subject of this presentation.

Thomas E. Crow is the Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art, and Associate Provost for the Arts at New York University. He has authored two influential studies of eighteenth-century French painting: Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris (1985) and Emulation: Making Artists for Revolutionary France(1995). Subsequent publications, including The Rise of the Sixties: American and European Art in the Era of Dissent and the essay collection Modern Art in the Common Culture (both 1996), examine the later twentieth century, while The Intelligence of Art (1999) analyses specific moments in the history of art. Crow’s more recent texts focus on single artists, including Gordon Matta-Clark (2003), and Robert Smithson (2004), and his most recent book, The Long March of Pop: Art, Design, and Music, 1930–1995, was published by Yale University Press in January 2015.

Thomas E. Crow is the James S. Ackerman Scholar in Residence at the American Academy in Rome in the fall of 2016.

The lecture will be held in English. You can watch this event livestreamed at https://livestream.com/aarome

The event is organized in collaboration with the Visual Studies - Rome Network (ViStuRN).

Zoe Strauss – The Photographer and the City: Philadelphia

American Classics
AAR Lecture Room
McKim, Mead & White Building
Via Angelo Masina, 5
Rome, Italy
Lecture/Conversation
Zoe Strauss - The Photographer and the City - Philadelphia

This event is part of the series New Work in the Arts & Humanities: American Classics.

Few photographers are as closely associated with a major city as Zoe Strauss is with Philadelphia. Between 2001 and 2010, Strauss explored the complexities of contemporary urban America in a series of annual one-day outdoor photography exhibitions, set up under Interstate 95 in Philadelphia. Strauss called the project and the pictures on display “an epic narrative about the beauty and struggle of everyday life.” Both the choice of venue, a disused space under a major traffic artery running through the city, and her compelling photographs shown there revived and updated the tradition of socially-engaged American street photography. In this talk, Strauss will discuss her relationship with Philadelphia and her use of photography and political outreach to engage wider audiences and revive troubled urban neighborhoods.

Strauss’ work was featured in a major mid-career exhibition, Zoe Strauss 10 Years, organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2012. In 2006 she participated in the Whitney Biennial, and in 2008 she published her first book, America. Her work has been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago; the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, and the Wexner Center for the Art, Columbus, among other international institutions. She is the Richard Grubman and Caroline Mortimer Photographer in Residence at the American Academy in Rome in the fall of 2016.

Strauss’ talk will open the exhibition A View of One’s Own - Three Women Photographers in Rome: Esther Boise Van Deman, Georgina Masson, Jeannette Montgomery Barron, which features a selection of photographs by foreign women in Rome from three successive generations, all of them connected to the American Academy. Their work confronts aspects of the Eternal City and its urban transformation over more than a century, from the Belle Époque to the present day. At the same time, it tracks the emergence of photography as an independent medium wielded by women with distinctive viewpoints, as it evolved from a documentary aid to a vehicle for subjective, even gendered expression.

The event is part of La Quadriennale in città (16° Quadriennale d’Arte) and FOTOGRAFIA, Festival Internazionale di Roma.

The lecture will be held in English.

EXHIBITION EVENTS:
Exhibition Opening
13 October 2016
6pm-9pm, AAR Gallery

Lecture EVENT CANCELLED
Letizia Battaglia
The Photographer and the City - Palermo
3 November 2016
6:30pm, AAR Lecture Room

EXHIBITION HOURS:
Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, 4pm-7pm
until 27 November 2016
The exhibition will also be open on 26 October, 3 November and 10 November from 5pm to 8pm.

Charles Ray – Contemporary Sculpture from the Past

American Classics
Villa Aurelia
Largo di Porta S. Pancrazio, 1
Rome, Italy
Lecture/Conversation
Charles Ray - Contemporary Sculpture from the Past

This event is part of the series New Work in the Arts & Humanities: American Classics.

In two public lectures preceding the opening of the exhibition of his new work (one on May 17 and another on May 18, immediately preceding the exhibition opening), Charles Ray, who was been redefining the possibilities of contemporary sculptural practice since the early 1980s, will discuss his innovative approach to sculpture informed by his close looking at the art of the past. Ray is the Deenie Yudell Artist in Residence at the American Academy in Rome in the spring of 2017. The lectures will be held in English.

17 May 2017
6pm - Lecture by Charles Ray
Contemporary Sculpture from the Past
Villa Aurelia, Porta San Pancrazio, 1

18 May 2017
6pm - Lecture by Charles Ray
The Work of Charles Ray
AAR Lecture Room - Via Angelo Masina, 5

6:30–9:00pm - exhibition opening
Charles Ray, Mountain Lion Attacking a Dog
AAR Gallery

The exhibition is curated by Peter Benson Miller, Andrew Heiskell Arts Director at the American Academy in Rome.

Exhibition opening hours: Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 4pm to 7pm until 2 July 2017.

The lectures and exhibition are made possible by the Syde Hurdus Foundation.

Charles Ray, Mountain Lion Attacking a Dog

American Classics
AAR Lecture Room and Gallery
McKim, Mead & White Building
Via Angelo Masina, 5
Rome, Italy
Exhibition
Lecture/Conversation
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Thursday, May 18–Sunday, July 2, 2017

Charles Ray, Mountain Lion Attacking a Dog

In the second of two public lectures, Charles Ray continues his discussion of his work. Immediately following the lecture, the opening of the exhibition, Charles Ray, Mountain Lion Attacking a Dog, will take place in the AAR Gallery.

In the spirit of Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad (1869), in which America’s mythologies about itself are brought into relief in a direct encounter with Europe, the American Academy in Rome has invited Ray to develop a new work exploring the theme of “American Classics.” This work will have its debut as part of a two-day program featuring Ray, one of the most celebrated contemporary artists working in the United States, interrogating the enduring currency in the contemporary world of cultural practices inherited from antiquity.

In Mountain Lion Attacking a Dog, Ray plays with the conventions that have defined the canons of classical sculpture. In this case, he revisits the famous Hellenistic sculptural group Lion Attacking a Horse (Greek, 325–300 BC; restored in Rome in 1594) from the Capitoline Museums, converting the naturalistic scene of primal violence, among the most storied works of art to survive from antiquity, into a typically American vernacular. In Ray’s hands, the animal group in the Capitoline, an icon of Rome much admired by Michelangelo Buonarroti, is transposed to an American wilderness increasingly encroached upon and compromised by urban sprawl. For many years, Ray has hiked in the Santa Monica Mountains, a coastal range in Southern California bound by major traffic arteries and some of the most densely settled areas of the United States. The mountains host a variety of wildlife, including a dwindling population of Mountain lions, a vestige of the storied American frontier, struggling to survive in a habitat too isolated and too small to sustain it.

Ray is the Deenie Yudell Artist in Residence at the American Academy in Rome in the spring of 2017.

In two public lectures preceding the opening of the exhibition, Ray will discuss his approach to sculpture exploring American myths informed by his close looking at the art of the past. The lectures will be held in English.

May 17, 2017

6:00pm – Lecture by Charles Ray
Contemporary Sculpture from the Past
Villa Aurelia, Porta San Pancrazio, 1

May 18, 2017

6:00pm – Lecture by Charles Ray
The Work of Charles Ray
AAR Lecture Room

6:30–9:00pm – Exhibition opening
Charles Ray, Mountain Lion Attacking a Dog
AAR Gallery

The exhibition is curated by Peter Benson Miller, Andrew Heiskell Arts Director at the American Academy in Rome.

Exhibition opening hours: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from 4:00 to 7:00pm until July 2, 2017.

This event is part of the series New Work in the Arts & Humanities: American Classics. The lectures and exhibition are made possible by the Syde Hurdus Foundation.

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Event does not include video

Ping Chong & Hou Hanru – All Islands Connect Underwater

American Classics
Conversations/Conversazioni
Villa Aurelia
Largo di Porta S. Pancrazio, 1
Rome, Italy
Lecture/Conversation
Ping Chong with Hou Hanru - All Islands Connect Underwater

This event is the keynote lecture for the series New Work in the Arts & Humanities: American Classics.

Ping Chong is an internationally acclaimed interdisciplinary artist and pioneer in the use of media in the theater. The recipient of a 2014 National Medal of Arts award, since 1972 Ping Chong has created over 100 works for the stage which have been presented at major theatres and festivals worldwide including the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the RomaEuropa Festival to name a few. His work encompasses puppetry, dance, documentary theatre and multimedia spectacle and has explored subjects ranging from the Black Lives Matter Movement to modernization in China to the experiences of Muslim youth in post -9/11 America. Throughout, the common thread is a unifying commitment to artistic innovation and social responsibility.

In this lecture with media, Ping Chong will discuss his career in relation to the evolving political and cultural movements of the last five decades. He will show excerpts from two recent works BEYOND SACRED: Voices of Muslim Identity (2015) and COLLIDESCOPE 2.0: Adventures in Pre and Post Racial America (2016) as well as take questions from the audience.

Ping Chong is the Mary Miss Artist in Residence at the American Academy in Rome in the fall 2016. Hou Hanru is the Artistic Director of the MAXXI.

The event will be held in English.

The 2016–17 Conversations/Conversazioni series is sponsored by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation.

Jason Moran – Staged

American Classics
Villa Aurelia
Largo di Porta S. Pancrazio, 1
Rome, Italy
Lecture/Conversation
Jason Moran - STAGED

This event is part of the series New Work in the Arts & Humanities: American Classics.

As part of the ongoing series of events exploring "American Classics", celebrated musician, composer, and artist Jason Moran will discuss his ongoing investigations into the spaces inhabited by jazz performance and the residue it leaves behind. His recent exhibition STAGED, including works shown at the Venice Biennale in 2015, re-created architectural elements associated with historic jazz venues in New York from the 1940s and 1950s, such as the Savoy Ballroom and the Three Deuces, that no longer exist. For Moran, jazz is an exuberant art form, part of the living lore of the city, and an embodiment of the restlessness characterizing American society in recent years. His multivalent works examine the highly charged intersections between music, art and social history.

Awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2010, Moran, an electrifying jazz performer, is the Artistic Director for Jazz and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. He currently teaches at the New England Conservatory in Boston. Recently, he has created his own recording label, Yes Records, and launched a new magazine, LOOP, dedicated to different aspects of jazz culture. In the spring of 2018, Moran will have his first solo museum exhibition at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

Moran holds the Elliott Carter Memorial Residency at the American Academy in Rome for the summer of 2017.

The lecture will be held in English.

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