American Academy In Rome Announces This Year’s Rome Prize Winners (2025)

The 2025-26 recipients of the highly prestigious Rome Prize were announced Wednesday by the American Academy in Rome. The Rome Prize is awarded annually to American artists and scholars for research and work in the arts and humanities.

This year’s winners will be officially recognized during the Janet & Arthur Ross Rome Prize Ceremony Wednesday evening at the City University of New York Graduate Center.

There are 35 recipients of the Rome Prize this year. Each one will receive a stipend, workspace, and room and board at the Academy’s 11-acre campus on the Janiculum Hill in Rome, starting this fall. The stipend is $16,000 for a half-term (five months) and $30,000 for a full-term period of work in residence (10 months).

The Rome Prize has traditionally been awarded in 11 disciplines: ancient studies, architecture, design, historic preservation and conservation, landscape architecture, literature, medieval studies, modern Italian studies, music composition, Renaissance and early modern studies, and visual arts.

This year, a new pilot Rome Prize will be awarded in a twelfth field — environmental arts & humanities, designed “for collaborative efforts between artists and scholars working jointly on projects that help expand our understanding of the way human beings relate to, experience, and process their encounters with the natural world.”

This year’s awardees were selected from 990 applicants in 44 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and 17 different countries. The acceptance rate, determined by juries of distinguished artists and scholar was 3.54%.

“The Rome Prize is one of the world’s most prestigious fellowship programs and provides the rare opportunity for scholars and artists across a range of sub-fields to collaborate with each other,” said Peter N. Miller, president of the American Academy in Rome, in the press release.

“Presented with the opportunity to deeply engage with their work and with that of the other fellows, Rome Prize winners return home with perspectives profoundly enriched by their immersion in an interdisciplinary community set in Rome. The winners form the heart of the Academy, embodying its ethos and extending its international impact through their work now and into the future,” added Miller.

Here is the complete list of the 2025-26 Rome Prize winners, plus the winner of the Tsao Family Rome Prize.

Ancient Studies

Paula Gaither, Department of Classics, Stanford University; Cynthia Liu, Department of Classics, University of Oxford; William Pedrick, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University; and Dennis E. Trout, Department of Classics, Archaeology, and Religion, University of Missouri. and Darcy Tuttle, Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology Graduate Group, University of California, Berkeley.

Architecture

Akima Brackeen, School of Architecture, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; and Cory Henry, Principal and Founder, Atelier Cory Henry, Los Angeles, CA.

Design

Heather Scott Peterson, Department of Architecture, Woodbury University; and Ginny Sims-Burchard, Proprietor and Studio Artist, Ginny Sims Ceramics, Minneapolis.

Environmental Arts And Humanities

Sean Mooney, Managing Director and Chief Curator, Rock Foundation, New York; Chuna McIntyre, Founder and Director, Nunamta Yup’ik Eskimo Singers and Dancers; Katharine Ogle, Department of English, University of Southern California; Adam Summers, Department of Biology and the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington.

Historic Preservation And Conservation

Claudia Chemello, Principal and Co-founder, Terra Mare Conservation, Charleston, SC; and Paul Mardikian, Principal and Co-founder, Terra Mare Conservation, Charleston, SC.

Landscape Architecture

Tameka Baba, Landscape Architecture Section, Knowlton School, Ohio State University; Sean Burkholder, Department of Landscape Architecture, Stuart Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania; and Karen Lutsky, Landscape Architecture, College of Design, University of Minnesota.

Literature

Maya Binyam, Department of Literature, Claremont McKenna College; and David Keplinger, MFA Program in Creative Writing, Department of Literature, American University.

Medieval Studies

Nastasya Kosygina, Program in Visual Studies, University of California, Irvine; and John Mulhall, Department of History, Purdue University.

Modern Italian Studies

Charles Leavitt, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Notre Dame; and Kevin Martín, Department of Italian Studies, University of California, Berkeley.

Musical Composition

Lembit Beecher, Composer, New York, NY; and Oswald Huỳnh, Composer, Portland, Oregon.

Renaissance And Early Modern Studies

Eva Del Soldato, Department of Francophone, Italian and Germanic Studies, University of Pennsylvania; and Margo H. Weitzman, Department of Art History, Rutgers University.

Tsao Family Rome Prize

Daniel J. Sheridan, Independent Scholar, Knoxville, Tennessee.

Visual Arts

Jennifer Bornstein, Department of Art, University of California, Irvine; T.J. Dedeaux-Norris, Department of Painting and Drawing, School of Art, Art History, and Design, University of Iowa; Andrea Fraser, Department of Art, University of California, Los Angeles; Liz Glynn, Department of Art, University of California, Irvine Heather Hart, Department of Art and Design, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University; and Jefferson Pinder, Department of Sculpture, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

About The American Academy in Rome

Founded in 1894 under the leadership of American architect Charles F. McKim, the American Academy in Rome was chartered by an Act of Congress in 1905. In addition to McKim, other early supporters included Harvard College, The Carnegie Foundation, JPMorgan, The Rockefeller Foundation, and William K. Vanderbilt. The academy is supported today by private donations from individuals and foundations and by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Since its founding the American Academy of Rome has served as a center for research and creativity, allowing its residents to immerse themselves in the experience of Rome and be enriched by fellow members. Residents and fellows of the Academy have received 622 Guggenheim Fellowships, 74 Pulitzer Prizes, 54 MacArthur Fellowships, 26 Grammy awards, five Pritzker Prizes, nine Poet Laureate appointments, and five Nobel Prizes.