The American Academy in Rome announced today the winners of the 2025–26 Rome Prize, the rigorous competition supporting innovative fellows in the arts, humanities, and sciences. The Samuel H. Kress Foundation | Millicent Mercer Johnsen Rome Prize is awarded to Margo Weitzman to support her work in Renaissance & Early Modern Studies. The Rome Prize equips artists and scholars with the time, space, setting, and colleagues to explore and create in the singular city of Rome. The 35 recipients will reside at the Academy’s 11-acre grounds in the Eternal City for five to ten months, starting this September.
“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. “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.”
“Fellows credit their time at the Academy with reshaping their understanding of their disciplines, inspiring them to think more broadly and act more boldly in their creative and scholarly endeavors,” said Calvin Tsao, Chair of the Board of Trustees for the American Academy in Rome. “For decades, the most promising American scholars and artists have honed their craft at the Academy and have been transformed into luminaries for their disciplines. We are committed to supporting this evolution for years to come.”
Rome Prize winners are selected annually by juries of distinguished artists and scholars through a national competition. This year’s competition received 990 applications from applicants in 44 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and 17 different countries. The acceptance rate was 3.54 percent. The recipients range from 28 to 71 years old, with an average age of 45.
This year, the American Academy in Rome introduces a pilot Rome Prize dedicated to the Environmental Arts & Humanities, designed specifically 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.
Joining the 2025-2026 Rome Prize winners throughout the fellowship year is a program of invited residents: artists and scholars of international standing who live and work at the Academy for periods ranging from one to three months. The fellows and residents will engage one another as they rethink and expand the boundaries of their disciplines, challenge assumptions, and cultivate ideas that resonate far beyond the institution's walls. The residents are Emily Greenwood (ancient studies), Susan Chin (architecture), Lesley Lokko (architecture), Christiane Gruber (art history), Louis Menand (critic), Christine Sun Kim (design), Lorraine Wild (design), Stanley Nelson (film), Brent Leggs (historic preservation and conservation), Glenn LaRue Smith (landscape architecture), Roxani Margariti (medieval studies), Mason Bates (musical composition), Rhiannon Giddens (musical composition), Osvaldo Golijov (musical composition), Subhankar Banerjee (photography), Cindy Sherman (photography), Juan Felipe Herrera (poetry), and Tony Cokes (visual arts).
Additional Programming
The Academy’s fellows and residents collaborate to rethink disciplinary boundaries, challenge prevailing assumptions, and cultivate ideas that extend far beyond the institution. The exhibition Roman Thresholds, on view April 24–May 25 at a83 in New York, showcases the enduring impact of the Rome Prize through an exhibition of prints, drawings, and collages by American Academy in Rome alumni. These works explore architectural forms to blur the lines between architecture, visual art, and design, all shaped by the transformative experience of the Rome Prize. Featured participants include Germane Barnes (2022 Fellow), Michael Graves (1962 Fellow, 1979 Resident), Katherine Jenkins (2023 Fellow), Yasmin Vobis (2017 Fellow), and David Weeks (2024 Fellow).
About the American Academy in Rome
Since 1894, the American Academy in Rome has functioned as a residential center for research and creativity. Its purpose has always been to enable highly motivated scholars and artists to immerse themselves in the experience of Rome, ancient and modern, and to be inspired by daily exchange with the other members of this creative community. The Academy has made an outsized impact on the intellectual and cultural life of the United States, and its Fellows and Residents have been recognized with 622 Guggenheim Fellowships, 74 Pulitzer Prizes, 54 MacArthur Fellowships, 26 Grammy awards, 5 Pritzker Prizes, 9 Poet Laureate appointments, and 5 Nobel Prizes. Approximately 35 Fellows are selected as winners of the Rome Prize each year by rotating juries in the different fields.