"Founded in 1894 as a place where American architects could "form a correct taste," the fellows of the American Academy in Rome enjoy food, wine, culture, conversation and ... karaoke (?) chronicle
On a Roman Hilltop, Meals That Nourish the Imagination
By FRANCIS X. ROCCA

Rome

"Depending on what kind of night you want to have, you figure out who you want to sit next to," says Jacob A. Latham, a doctoral student in religious studies from the University of California at Santa Barbara who is on a fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. "There's one professor here who's known as a very liberal wine pourer. If you plan to head into the library afterwards, you don't sit next to him."

At dinner on this midwinter weeknight, the wine bottles empty at a modest rate, and the mood is lively but not hilarious. Talk at the candlelit tables shifts from the history of the papacy in late antiquity to the virtues of Brokeback Mountain, and from the tribulations of Italian academe to the challenge of fashion bargain hunting with the euro topping $1.20.

The five dozen or so diners in the stately room, which is dominated by a massive stone fireplace (unlit), range in age from mid-20s to mid-60s. Among them are archaeologists, classicists, designers, historians, and photographers, along with artists and scholars in more than a dozen other fields. What these men and women have in common, besides professional distinction or the distinct promise thereof, is the importance to their work of the rich and ancient city on whose highest hill they sit.

Founded in 1894 as a place where American architects could "form a correct taste," the American Academy has gradually expanded its mission to embrace a wide range of arts and humanities. In the process, it has assembled an alumni roster boasting two Nobel Prize winners (Joseph Brodsky and Nadine Gordimer), four Poets Laureate, and at least 33 Pulitzer Prize winners. The institution has also adjusted to changes in the way that Americans live and work, so that the character of the fellowship experience today depends far more than before on the professional and personal goals of the fellows themselves.

The Renaissance-style palace was custom-built for the institution in 1914, through the largess of American plutocrats led by J.P. Morgan. Surrounding an interior courtyard, where meals are served during the warmer months, are the dining room and other common areas�including a coffee bar and a room with a pool table�as well as the dark wood-paneled library, whose 136,000-volume collection is particularly strong in classics, art history, and archaeology. Fellows, who enjoy 24-hour access to the stacks, have been known to pay occasional late-night visits in their pajamas.

Private work and living spaces are upstairs. "This is the studio of my dreams, the studio I always wanted but never thought I would have," says Carrie M. Weems, a photographer, gazing around her vast corner room, with its skylight and two-story windows framing panoramic views of the city. The space is more than big enough to hold parties in, and Ms. Weems, whose current projects include a study of Roman architecture and a video tribute to great Italian movie directors, occasionally does just that, inviting other fellows as well as local artists.

All recipients of the academy's Rome Prize fellowship�up to 30 of them each year, who typically come for 11-month stays�receive a studio or office, as well as a bedroom with private bath, cleaned by a housekeeper once a week. Many double up with a spouse or significant other, known in the institution's parlance as a "fellow traveler," who has the opportunity to rent an office or studio for his or her own work.

Families with children rent apartments next door, in a building that the academy leased in 1999. This year there are 17 school-age children in residence, an unprecedented high, and the institution has made efforts to integrate them into a traditionally adult environment. The dining room welcomes youngsters on Friday nights, when the menu offers kid-friendly foods like hamburgers and French fries. A small park on academy property across the street features a playground.

No one would mistake the academy for a five-star hotel. Despite the fund-raising success of its current president, Adele Chatfield-Taylor, its frugal ethos remains evident: Flimsy paper napkins accompany meals, and a sign in the main common room reminds departing users to turn off the lights.

Yet the fellows, who need spend none of their $2,000 monthly stipend on ordinary living expenses, insist that they want for nothing. The academy is prepared to satisfy even extraordinary requests, such as a private plane for the recent fellow who wanted to shoot aerial photographs of the city, and more frivolous ones like a karaoke machine. The greatest luxury of all is the fellows' freedom to work without interruption. "Nobody has to go marketing, nobody has to cook, nobody has to tidy up," says Ms. Chatfield-Taylor, herself a former fellow, in the field of historic preservation.

Such comforts pose the dangers inherent in any gilded cage. "I feel that the American Academy is somewhat divided from the city of Rome," says Marco Cavarzere, an Italian doctoral candidate in history, and one of the institution's small but growing number of non-U.S. fellows, including three this year from Central and Eastern Europe. "A lot of people at the American Academy just stay here and don't try to know their Italian counterparts."

"It's probably 50 percent who have very little interaction with the Italian environment," acknowledges Kimberly Bowes, an archaeology professor from Fordham University whose interests regularly bring her into contact with local scholars. Cultural exchange is a high priority of the director, Carmela Vircillo Franklin, the first Italian native ever to hold that job. But how much exchange actually happens, Ms. Bowes says, depends on one's proficiency in Italian�less common among the artists than among the academics, who typically arrive with a background in Italian studies.

About the only people in Rome whom fellows cannot avoid meeting are other fellows, and that is very much by design. The academy experience has always been an intrinsically communal one. Staff members and fellows alike regularly use the term "cross-pollination" to describe the benefit of bringing so many learned and creative people under the same roof, and particularly to the same table.

Scholars in related fields are naturally apt to compare notes. Mr. Latham, whose dissertation treats processions in early Christian Rome, has plenty to discuss with Ms. Bowes, who is writing a book about private Roman churches in late antiquity. But some of the most fruitful exchanges transcend disciplinary boundaries, and even the divide between scholars and artists.

Alex Schweder, an architect from New York who is experimenting with structures made out of biodegradable plastics recently developed in Italy, found himself wanting to know more about Fluxus, the 1960s movement of "ephemeral, time-based" art, as a potential source of models for his own work. Chris G. Bennett, a doctoral student in the history of art from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor who is studying a related Italian movement, provided him with an "arsenal of reading material," Mr. Schweder says.

Sometimes full-blown collaborations catch fire, such as that between Mr. Schweder and Richard Barnes, a photographer, who are preparing a joint video-and-photography exhibition on the spectacular flocks of starlings that congregate at sunset over certain parts of Rome. Although the two men are affiliated with the same gallery in New York, they had never met before, and say they probably would never have worked together had they not been here at the same time.

"There's a certain amount of trust that you need to have in order to collaborate," Mr. Schweder says. "One of the things that the academy does is that, through the meals, for example, you just talk about day-to-day stuff. You get to know each other. You build that level of trust that is a prerequisite, really, for successful collaboration."

The starling project has drawn in others at the institution, many of whom have asked to accompany the artists on what they call their "fishing" expeditions to capture images of the birds. Laurie Anderson, the multimedia performance artist, went with Mr. Barnes on one of the trips during her time as an academy resident this winter. (A small group of senior artists and scholars spend a few months at the academy each year as residents. Unlike fellows, who have applied for their positions, residents come by invitation.) "To see the birds through her eyes, to think about sound and the way she was hearing the birds, and the beating of the wings when you have 100,000 birds above you�those were all really important," Mr. Barnes says.

Enriching as the encounters may be, some fellows can find them tiring. "The most intimidating thing in the American Academy is that you are always in social life," says Mr. Cavarzere, the Italian fellow. "You go to dinner, you go to lunch, and you can't be relaxed, completely, because you have to talk to other people" about your work.

"It's impossible to see an institution like this being founded today," says Peter Mazur, a doctoral student in history from Northwestern University. "Back then there was more of an esprit de corps." He notes the defunct practice of afternoon tea. "If you're talking about getting work done and stuff like that, if you're going to have tea every day at 5, it's not going to happen."

"Life seems to be more about speeding things up than slowing things down," concludes Ms. Chatfield-Taylor, who speculates with undisguised regret that most of the current fellows wouldn't even have applied if their obligation had been to stay for three years, as was the case until World War II. "Sometimes I wish I could take the person and say, 'Take a deep breath. This is a very special year, and part of what you want is to expand a little. Take a deep breath.' I worry because they work so hard."