American Academy in Rome Announces 2024–2025 Rome Prize Fellows

The McKim, Mead & White Building (the sole building designed by the firm in Europe) at the American Academy in Rome campus. Photo courtesy AAR

A new cohort of 31 artists and academics have joined the ranks of American creatives to be named as Rome Prize fellows by the American Academy in Rome (AAR), a United States Congress-incorporated nonprofit first established in 1894 under the leadership of architect Charles McKim that continues to serve today as America’s oldest independent overseas research institution for the arts and humanities.

This September, the latest group of Rome Prize awardees will start their residencies on the AAR’s historic 11-acre campus at Janiculum Hill. Each of them will be presented with the “time and space to think and work” through independent workspace, room and board, and stipends granted by the AAR as part of the highly competitive program, which spans 11 disciplines including architecture, landscape architecture, design, and historic preservation and conservation. This cycle, the AAR received a total of 1,106 applications from potential fellows—a record high—hailing from 46 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. Thirteen percent of these applicants were born outside of the U.S. The acceptance rate for this cycle was 2.9 percent, with 39 percent of the awardees identifying as persons of color.

Two newly named fellows, Megumi Aihara and Dan Spiegel of San Francisco–based studio Spiegel Aihara Workshop, are 2019 Design Vanguard recipients. They join other Design Vanguards that are also past Rome Prize fellows including Michael Meredith and Hilary Sample of MOS, Keith Mitnick and Mireille Roddier of Mitnick.Roddier, J. Yolande Daniels of StudioSUMO, and Paul Lewis of LTL Architects.

Jurors overseeing the design, architecture, and landscape architecture disciplines included Julie Bargmann (chair), Rosalie Genevro, Sara Zewde, Sarah Whiting, Yoonjai Choi, and Sunil Bald.

In addition to the latest Rome Prize recipients, the AAR also announced its 2024–2025 Italian Fellows, a concurrent program that invites three Italian artists and scholars to join their American counterparts for the duration of the fellowship cycle. Also revealed is the winner of the Terra Foundation Affiliated Fellowship, which went to Kimmah M. Dennis, artist and visiting artist coordinator in the Department of Painting and Drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Below are the 2024-2025 Rome Prize winners, listed with their respective projects that they’ll be working on in the Eternal City, in the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, design, and historic preservation. The Rome Prize winners will be presented at the Janet & Arthur Ross Rome Prize Ceremony and Concert, taking place tonight at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York. You can view the full list of the AAR’s latest fellows, including those working in the visual arts, literature, medieval studies, and more, here.

2024–2025 Rome Prize in Architecture

Michelle JaJa Chang Assistant Professor of Architecture, Harvard University Graduate School of Design | Resistance to Symbolic Form | Arnold W. Brunner/Frances Barker Tracy/ Katherine Edwards Gordon Rome Prize

David Costanza, Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, Cornell University | Blending Stone | Lily Auchincloss Rome Prize

2024–2025 Rome Prize in Landscape Architecture

Anthony Acciavatti, Diana Balmori Assistant Professor, School of Architecture, Yale University | Groundwater Earth: The World before and after the Tubewell | Gilmore D. Clarke and Michael Rapuano/ Kate Lancaster Brewster Rome Prize

Megumi Aihara and Dan Spiegel, Principals, Spiegel Aihara Workshop, San Francisco; Continuing Lecturer, Department of Architecture, College of Environmental Design, University of California, Berkeley (Spiegel) | Landscapes after the Fire| Garden Club of America/Prince Charitable Trusts Rome Prize

2024–2025 Rome Prize in Design

Amy Revier, Owner/Director, Amy Revier, Austin, Texas | Woven Narratives of Rome | Rolland Rome Prize and Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Rome Prize

2024–2025 Rome Prize in Historic Preservation & Conservation

Katherine L. Beaty, Book Conservator for Special Collections, Weissman Preservation Center, Harvard Library | A Technical Study of Italian Archival Bookbindings | Suzanne Deal Booth Rome Prize

Krupali Krusche, Associate Professor, School of Architecture, University of Notre Dame | The Roman Forum – Learning Grounds for the Renaissance – What Did They Truly Learn? | Adele Chatfield-Taylor Rome Prize

Matt Hickman is Senior News/Digital Editor at Architectural Record. Previously, he served as Senior Editor at The Architect’s Newspaper and has over a decade of experience as a freelance writer and editor specializing in historic preservation, public space, and the intersection of the natural world and built environment. A native of the Pacific Northwest, Matt holds an MFA in creative nonfiction writing from The New School.