ACCADEMIA STANZE PERSONE in the Making, Part I: Marco Raparelli

Portraits of AAR Fellows (ca. 1914-1939) in the AAR Bar. Credit: Star Black

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. In the months September 2010—January 2011 he has been in residence at the American Academy as an Italian Affiliated Fellow in the Arts.

Raparelli—with fourteen other current and former Italian Affiliated Fellows—is featured in the show ACCADEMIA °  STANZE ° PERSONE, co-curated by Luca Massimo Barbero (MACRO) and Lexi Eberspacher (AAR). The exhibition runs at the Academy until Thursday 3 March 2011. Here is a behind-the-scenes look at the installation of Marco Raparelli’s Unfamiliar Idea of Rome (2010). In this piece he infiltrates the rows of portraits of past Academy Fellows arrayed over the institution’s bar with ink on paper caricatures of present members of the AAR community. The work appears courtesy of Galleria Umberto di Marino, Naples. Credit for all photographs below is owed to Davide Franceschini / Altrospazio.

Through 3 March 2011, An Exhibition of 15 AAR Italian Affiliated Fellows in the Arts

The American Academy opened its doors, windows, and communal spaces to a public of more than 400 from 6 to 9 PM 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 exhibition runs at the Academy until Thursday 3 March 2011.

This show is co-curated by AAR Programs Associate Lexi Eberspacher and by Luca Massimo Barbero, Director of Rome’s hugely popular MACRO Museum. It provides a splendid anthology of the best work being done today in Italy in diverse artistic disciplines.  For a description in Italian see here; the Facebook page is here. And see throughout this post below for photos of the 20 January event opening.

At the AAR, Three Concerts by the Scharoun Ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic Jan. 14-16

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. This marked the third annual visit by the internationally-acclaimed chamber ensemble, offering free concerts to the AAR Community and to the Roman concert-going public.

As in past years, during their visit to Rome, the members of the Scharoun Ensemble lived, rehearsed and took their meals at the AAR—in addition to performing for three days at the highest imaginable level beautiful standard concert repertoire and ground-breaking modern works. The latter included pieces by current Fellows in Musical Composition Huck Hodge and Paul Rudy and by Keeril Makan (FAAR ’09).

In San Antonio, AAR Alums Make the Scene at 2011 APA & AIA Annual Meetings

“You know, it’s heavily restored”, practically whispered the FAAR in ancient studies as a large, animated group of classicist and archaeologist Fellows and alums of the American Academy passed the iconic façade of the Alamo.

The occasion? Returning from a rocking AAR Society of Fellows reception at the 112th Joint Meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America and the American Philological Association. That took place in San Antonio Texas from Thursday the 6^th through Sunday the 9^th of January 2011.

AAR Announces Ten Major Public Events for 2011

Three concerts by the Scharoun Ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic; a retrospective of the first five years of AAR Italian Fellows in the Arts; a series of lectures on “Attitudes toward Food and Wine in the Italian Renaissance” by Princeton professor Leonard Barkan (RAAR’10); a tribute to Joseph Brodsky (RAAR’81) by five leading contemporary poets; the world premiere of Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott‘s Ti Jean in Concert; a multimedia celebration of the 400th anniversary of Galileo‘s first demonstration of his telescope on the grounds of what is now the AAR—and that just takes us up to the 14th of April 2011.

The American Academy is pleased to announce its major public events in Rome for 2011. Here you can download the AAR 2011 Events Brochure that describes in Italian and English the main programmatic offerings for the upcoming year. And be sure to check the Calendar on this website for additional public events and updates.