The Lessons of Rome: Architects at the American Academy, 1947-1966
Open Access
- Author:
- Costanzo, Denise Rae
- Graduate Program:
- Art History
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- May 08, 2009
- Committee Members:
- Craig Robert Zabel, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Craig Robert Zabel, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Brian A Curran, Committee Member
Sarah K Rich, Committee Member
Robin Lemuel Thomas Ii, Committee Member
James Theodore Kalsbeek, Committee Member - Keywords:
- George Howe
Louis Kahn
American Academy in Rome
architects and travel
American architects abroad
Robert Venturi - Abstract:
- In 1947, the American Academy in Rome faced a fundamental decision: to either recommit to the Beaux-Arts artistic mission behind its establishment in 1894, or adapt to a drastically changed postwar environment. Although characterized as “a holdout against Modernism,” this does not accurately describe its relationship with American architecture between 1947-1966. During these years, the Academy actively welcomed emerging and established modern architects through fellowships, residencies, and administrative roles. Its altered policies were designed to align it with the discipline’s mid-century embrace of modernism and redefine the Rome Prize in architecture to serve a new set of professional values. The Academy’s attempts to transform its institutional culture and maintain relevance to one of its core constituencies would ultimately succeed, despite entrenched internal opposition and lingering doubts. Forty well-credentialed young graduates from the nation’s top architecture schools would come to Rome during these years to enjoy fellowships of unprecedented flexibility. Some, most notably Robert Venturi and Michael Graves, would later rise to considerable prominence, burnishing the Rome Prize’s reputation among architects in the late twentieth century. But all the Fellows provided collective, crucial momentum to the modernist Grand Tour. They helped keep Rome on the architect’s map, and contributed to ongoing redefinitions of Rome’s relevance to contemporary practice. A new American architectural establishment also tied itself to the Academy. The inaugural postwar residency of George Howe announced its dramatic shift in allegiance from classicist to modernist design ideology, and Louis Kahn’s career-changing Academy stay would attain mythic status. But a dozen others whose names are seldom associated with Rome—including Max Abramovitz, Edward Larabee Barnes, Pietro Belluschi, Wallace K. Harrison, Eero Saarinen, and Edward Durell Stone—would lend the Academy their time and names in varying capacities, buttressing its claim to professional legitimacy. As architects of the official U.S. presence abroad during the Cold War, their support for an institution struggling to reconcile the rhetoric of cultural power with modernity is utterly appropriate. Ultimately, the Academy’s architectural survival during the postwar period contributed a distant but engaged perspective on the American discipline, and helped architects continue to learn new lessons from Rome.