American Academy in Rome

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The American Academy in Rome (AAR)resulted from the 1913 merger of the American School of Architecture (founded 1894) and the American School of Classical Studies (founded 1895).

Member of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers.

Background

"The American Academy in Rome is one of the leading American overseas centers for independent study and advanced research in the fine arts and the humanities. Inspired by their comradeship in organizing America's contribution to the fine arts at the World's Columbian Exhibition in 1893, a group, including architects Charles Follen McKim and Daniel Burnham, painters John La Farge and Francis Millet, and sculptors Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Daniel Chester French, resolved to create a center to study art amid the classical tradition of ancient Rome. Rome was chosen as the site of the Academy because 'with the architectural and sculptural monuments and mural paintings, its galleries filled with the chef d'oeuvres of every epoch, no other city offers such a field for study or an atmosphere so replete with precedents.'"[1]

"In 1894, with the support of Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., William K. Vanderbilt and Henry Clay Frick, the new American School of Architecture was founded in Rome. A year later the American School of Classical Studies in Rome was formed by the Archaeological Institute of America, and in 1913, a union between the two Schools became what is now the American Academy in Rome."[2]

Institutional Members

Academy Staff, New York and Rome

The Board of Trustees is not listed on the Academy's web site.