When American Artists Trade Skylines for Roman Sunlight, Boundaries Blur and Histories Converse
Every year, a select group of American artists trades their familiar landscapes for the storied gardens of the American Academy in Rome—a tradition that dates back over a century. This year, six visual artists emerged from a record-breaking pool of over a thousand applicants, earning the coveted Rome Prize and a chance to create amid ancient ruins and Renaissance echoes.
The winners span a spectrum of media and ideas: Lex Brown’s video art draws on poetry and sci-fi to dissect the digital age’s shadows, while Matthew Connors reimagines documentary photography with experimental flair. Richard Mosse’s lens confronts global crises, challenging what documentary images can reveal, and Nona Faustine’s photography unpacks identity and representation in contemporary America. Installation artists Devon Dikeou and Sheila Pepe transform everyday objects and materials into immersive, site-specific works—Pepe’s “improvisational crochet” even weaves domestic and industrial threads into sprawling, web-like forms.
In Rome, these artists become both guests and interlocutors, their work bridging continents, centuries, and creative boundaries—proof that art’s dialogue is never bound by geography.
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