The American Academy in Rome

The American Academy in Rome is one of the most prominent American overseas institutions which promotes the advanced study and research in fine arts and humanities. It is a private cultural centre located on the Janiculum Hill that annually offers several scholarships, including the Rome Prize, which cover the stay at the Academy of American and Italian artists and scholars whose training cannot be separated from a direct and accurate knowledge of Roman culture.

The Academy was originally founded as a centre for the study of the classical art, however, after World War II the institution re-evaluated its organizational structure and artistic mission, creating a more inclusive environment and strengthening its presence internationally. It was mainly its openness to contemporary art tendencies, including the modernist architecture, to strengthen and enhance the transatlantic bond between Italy and the United States. During this period, the academy hosted personalities such as George Howe, Louis Kahn, Michael Graves, Pietro Belluschi, Robert Venturi, Alfred H. Barr, Leonard Bernstein, Pier Luigi Nervi, Iris Origo and Gian Carlo Menotti.

Venturi, who arrived at the Academy in 1956 as a fellow, returned in 1966 as a resident and wrote here Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, one of his most famous books. It was translated into Italian with the title Complessità e contraddizioni nell'architettura (Dedalo, Bari, 1980). For Kahn, his stay at the Academy as well as the direct knowledge of Roman architecture marked a turning point in his career as well as his abandonment of the International Style. Among the students and residents hosted by the academy in the decades following the end of World War II there were also the Pulitzer Prize winners Richard Wilbur and Louis Simpson as well as the Pritzker Prize winner Richard Meier.
 

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