American Academy in Rome

EXHIBITION OPENING
GIORGIO GRIFFA/KAMROOZ ARAM: PAINTINGS
October 20
6:00 – 9:00 pm
Via Angelo Masina, 5

The exhibition creates a dialogue between two painters whose work illustrates how abstract painting reverberates across time and space. The painters Giorgio Griffa and Kamrooz Aram (2024 Carla Fendi Foundation Rome Prize Fellow) met in 2024 in Turin, and this exhibition extends a conversation they began about the place and purpose of cultural tradition, painting as a measure of time and rhythm, and how gesture is traced and captured.

The exhibition addresses this ongoing dialogue on abstraction, reflecting on different approaches to ornament and decoration, presence and loss, margins and intimacy. The show will be on display from October 23 to November 28, 2026, at the AAR Gallery, on Fridays and Saturdays from 4:00 – 7:00 pm.

For the opening, contemporary Italian poets Silvia Bre and Carmen Gallo will read a selection of poems chosen to reflect the themes of the exhibition. Both authors work with language in an organic way, crafting vivid images and evocative atmospheres while revealing a deep engagement with the truth-making power of language.

The American Academy is grateful to the exhibition lenders Alexander Gray Associates, New York and Galleria Lorcan O’Neill, Rome; and the Fondazione Giorgio Griffa, Turin.

The project is part of the cultural programming of the exhibition Giorgio Griffa: Paths in the Forest at the Clark Art Institute The Clark ; supported by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity DG Creatività Contemporanea MiC of the Italian Ministry of Culture under the Italian Council program (2025).

Fondazione Giorgio Griffa Kamrooz Aram Alexander Gray Associates Galleria Lorcan O'Neill Fondazione Carla Fendi

Earlier this week we welcomed chef, restaurateur activist and core supporter of the Academy, Alice Waters Alice Waters once again, along with the local farmers that supply the Rome Sustainable Food Project with seasonal, 0 km fresh products everyday, for our annual Producers Lunch, a kickstart to the 20th anniversary of the Rome Sustainable Food Project.

The vast majority of the RSFP’s produce comes from organically certified local producers. RSFP is more than a kitchen that serves meals to Academy residents, guests, and staff—it is an ecogastronomic endeavor that partners with local farmers, as well as an internship program that operates as an integrated institutional culinary program.

“The most important thing is that people eat together and they’re not just eating, but they’re being nourished by this project,” Alice Waters said.

1. Alice Waters in the RSFP Garden
2. Alice Waters with RSFP Producer Assunta Bernabei Assunta Bernabei
3. Sara Levi, Head Chef at the American Academy in Rome
4. A special lunch at the American Academy in Rome
5. Alice Waters speaking next to AAR President & CEO Peter N. Miller
6. Andrea Francini, Head of the Bass Garden and RSFP Garden at the Academy, with RSFP Producers Giancarlo Gentili and Andrea Cippitelli
7. Alice Waters and AAR Director Aliza Wong
8. RSFP Interns and Producers, Andrea Francini, Alice Waters, and Jen Sherman, Culinary Director of the Alice Waters Institute

All photos by Isabella Nassiff

We continue to welcome Chris van den Berg Chris van den Berg as the Interim Andrew W. Mellon Humanities Professor for the 2026/27 academic year!

Van den Berg, the Aliki Perroti and Seth Frank ’55 Professor of Classical Studies at Amherst College, was a 2020 Fellow in Ancient Studies. He is the author of The Politics and Poetics of Cicero’s Brutus: The Invention of Literary History (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and The World of Tacitus’ Dialogus de Oratoribus: Aesthetics and Empire in Ancient Rome (Cambridge University Press, 2014), as well as dozens of articles and book reviews.

As Humanities Professor, van den Berg will be supporting and advising the new class of Rome Prize Fellows, assisting in the development of public programs, and more broadly, playing a vital role in fostering dialogue between the Academy, the Fellows and the broader community.

Van den Berg is succeeding former Humanities Professor Caroline Goodson (2003 Fellow), who completed her two-year term this summer and returned to Cambridge University, where she is a Professor of Early Medieval History. Please join us in welcoming him to the Academy.

Photo by Ludovica Anzaldi

CONCERT
Saturday, September 19

‘Field of Vision’ by composer Michael Gordon (2027 Resident) with Blow Up Percussion
In collaboration with Romaeuropa Festival
6:00 PM
American Academy of Rome Gardens, Via Giacomo Medici, 4

On Saturday, September 19 the American Academy in Rome and Romaeuropa Festival present the Italian premiere of “Field of Vision,” a work for 36 percussionists by American composer Michael Gordon Michael Gordon performed by Blow Up Percussion Blow Up Percussion .
The work is part of a series in which Gordon, co-founder of Bang on a Can music collective and Paul Fromm Resident in Composition at the American Academy in Rome, explores the spatial distribution of instruments, creating complex textures and hypnotic dynamics that immerse both performers and listeners in an almost meditative mode of
perception.

For this performance, Blow Up Percussion launched an international call to select percussionists from across Europe, resulting in a unique continent-wide collaboration. The concert will take place without fixed seating, as listeners are invited to move freely through the space, and experience the music from different positions among the performers.

Tickets are available for purchase through the link in bio.

A new academic year begins at the American Academy in Rome!

This week, we welcomed a new community of Rome Prize and Italian Fellows, Residents, and members of the Academy’s extended community to Rome at our annual Opening Reception, featuring a Presidential Lecture by President and CEO Peter N. Miller and an evening of conversation and exchange.

We’re pleased to welcome Nancy Lupo _nancy_lupa_ to the 2026–27 Rome Prize cohort in Visual Arts, awarded later last semester! Based between Berlin and Los Angeles, Lupo’s sculptural practice brings together objects, images, language, and installation. During her residency, she will develop Dying Playing, a project inspired by Etruscan mirrors and necropolises.

We’re also delighted to welcome Chris van den Berg Chris van den Berg as our Interim Andrew W. Mellon Humanities Professor, who will lead the Humanities Office and work with Fellows throughout the year and this year also marks the last year of tenure of our Director Aliza Wong

We are of course excited to welcome this year’s distinguished Residents, whose practices span architecture, art history, ancient and medieval studies, visual arts, design, music, film, photography, poetry, public art, and more. Their presence brings a wealth of experience and perspectives to the Academy, strengthening the interdisciplinary exchange at the heart of our community.

Here’s to a year of endings and beginnings, new ideas, creative work, research, collaboration, and discovery in Rome. Stay tuned for news, public programming and opportunities!

🎆WE ARE BACK!🎆

TOMORROW

Peter N. Miller – Why Research Matters

6:30PM

Via Angelo Masina 5, Rome



Please join us tomorrow evening for the Presidential Lecture at the Academy, inaugurating the fall programming season and welcoming the new class of Fellows. Our President, Peter N. Miller, will deliver a lecture entitled “Why Research Matters.”

“What makes us live longer, better, and happier but is visible only to a few, and inexplicable even to those few?” This modern Sphinx’s riddle has but one answer: research. Those who do it think it self-explanatory, while those who benefit from it don’t see it at all. What would a history of research look like?

What is the meaning of research? And, looking ahead, how might research adapt itself to a world of AI? For an institution like the American Academy in Rome, identified as late as 1930 as one of only two American research institutes, the answers to these questions are central to its past, present, and future.

The lecture will be held in English, please RSVP as space is limited. To attend virtually, please find the Zoom link on the event page at aarome.org/events

Attendees are invited to join the reception following the lecture, to welcome and greet our 2026/2027 Rome Prize and Italian Fellows.

Photo: 1940 Fellows in the Library of the American Academy. Courtesy American Academy in Rome, Institutional Archive.

This month, we said farewell to our Humanities Professor, Caroline Goodson .et.alia , who will be returning to the University of Cambridge after serving a three-year term at the Academy. As Humanities Professor, Goodson played a crucial role in supporting and advising Rome Prize Fellows and shaping the Academy’s public programs, bringing the community into deeper dialogue with the city and strengthening networks of intellectual exchange.

Goodson was a Fellow in Ancient Studies at the American Academy in 2003 and has taught at the University of Cambridge since 2017. Her scholarship bridges the disciplines of medieval history and archaeology, focusing on the rise of early medieval polities in the Western Mediterranean and how different groups positioned themselves as successors to the Roman Empire. Earlier this year, she co-edited the two-volume Companion to Rome (Brill, Leiden), which explores the geography, topography, and spatial and material life of Rome during the first millennium.

This fall, we will welcome Chris van den Berg Chris van den Berg as Interim Humanities Professor. Van den Berg is Professor of Classical Studies at Amherst College and was a Fellow at the American Academy in Rome in 2020, where he worked on a project titled Critical Matter: Performance, Identity, and Object in Greco-Roman Criticism.

FELLOWS IN FOCUS: Lembit Beecher Lembit Beecher

This Wednesday at 6:00 pm Lembit Beecher, 2026 Fellow in Musical Composition, will present a movement from a new composition, “A Book of Falsehoods,” at the 69th Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, organized in partnership with Mahler & Lewitt Studios Mahler & LeWitt Studios and in collaboration with Carla Fendi Foundation Fondazione Carla Fendi in a new iteration this collaboration. Tickets are still available through the festival’s website: festivaldispoleto.com

Conceived during his residencies at the American Academy and the Mahler & LeWitt Studios, “A Book of Falsehoods” draws inspiration from his mother’s translation of the epic three-volume novel “Between Three Plagues” by Estonian author Jaan Kross, her methodological work process, and the natural rhythms of Estonian and English speech. It will be performed by Marco Venturi (horn), Karen Ouzounian (cello), Sergio Costa (piano), and the Erinys Quartet.

You can read more about Estonian-American composer, pianist and animator on our website, including a recent interview we conducted for our series Fellows in Focus:
“For the first seven months here I worked on a series of unexpected projects, many of which grew out of the diversions and peculiarities of this incredible city. But strangely enough, in the last couple of months I ended up writing the piece that I said I would write in my application.”

1. Photo by Enrico Brunetti
2. Initial sketches for a solo violin piece, photo courtesy Lembit Beecher
3. Performance for Open Studios 2026 alongside Enzo Filippetti (alto sax), Susanna Pagano (piano) and Karen Ouzounian (cello) at the American Academy. Photo by Claudia Gori.
4. A visit to the Ara Pacis with Paul Mardikian, 2026 Fellow in Historic Preservation & Conservation, photo courtesy Lembit Beecher
5. Lembit Beecher at the Festival dei Due Mondi

The Class of 2026 Fellows has officially departed, and we celebrate a year of extraordinary artistic and scholarly achievement.

Throughout the year, our Fellows carried the Academy’s work beyond our gates through exhibitions, performances, publications, public programs, conferences, and collaborations. From the Venice Architecture Biennale to museums, universities, and cultural institutions, they have shared new ideas, forged lasting partnerships, and contributed to vibrant conversations across disciplines.

Rome has served as both an incubator for new work and a launchpad for what comes next. We are grateful for all they have created during their time at the Academy and look forward to following their work and the impact they will continue to make in the years ahead, so we gathered some of their accomplishments and plans for the future in featured piece.

Congratulations, Class of 2026.

Go to the link in bio to read the article.

Photos by Gerardo Gaetani

1. 2026 Rome Prize and Italian Fellows*
2. 2026 Fellows and Residents
3. Board of Trustees of the American Academy
4. Staff of the American Academy
5. Full community of Fellows, Residents, Affiliated Fellows and families

Now we dedicate a shout out to our Scholars and their presentations for Open Stacks, an annual public showcase in which the Academy’s Fellows in the Humanities share the subjects of their research through short presentations reflecting their time in Rome. Last month, we welcomed visitors to the Academy to hear about topics ranging from seventeenth-century remedies for lovesickness and Jesuit translations of Chinese poetry to racial conflict in American-occupied Italy, alongside many other areas of inquiry explored by our Fellows throughout the year.

As the Class of 2026 Fellows conclude their time in Rome, we celebrate their achievements, the contributions they have made to the Academy community, and the work they will carry forward into the next chapter of their professional lives.

Cynthia Liu, Fellow in Ancient Studies Cynthia Liu
Kevin Martín, Fellow in Modern Italian Studies
Daniel J. Sheridan, Fellow in East-West Intersections
Paula Gaither, Fellow in Ancient Studies
Nastasya Kosygina, Fellow in Medieval Studies
Director of the American Academy in Rome Aliza Wong
Eva Del Soldato, Fellow in Renaissance & Early Modern Studies
Katherine Dennis, Fellow in Ancient Studies Katie Dennis
Charles Leavitt, Fellow in Modern Italian Studies
Stefano Milonia, Fellow in Medieval Studies
Margo H. Weitzman, Fellow in Renaissance & Early Modern Studies Margo Weitzman
William Pedrick, Fellow in Ancient Studies
Darcy Tuttle, Fellow in Ancient Studies Darcy Tuttle
John Mulhall, Fellow in Medieval Studies
The cohort of Fellows participating in Open Stacks 2026, with AAR Director Aliza Wong and Andrew W. Mellon Humanities Professor Caroline Goodson .et.alia .

All photos by Carlo Cornelli Carlo CNove Cornelli