Rome

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Another upcoming deadline you might want to consider is the Rome Prize, to spend a year at the American Academy in Rome. The deadline is November 1st, and it's a real long-shot, and if you don't live in NYC you can pretty much forget it. In fact, they should change the name of the place to the New York Academy in Rome.

2004/2005 Winners

Lucky DeBellevue, NY
Franco Mondini Ruiz, NY
Jackie Saccoccio, NY
George Stoll, CA

and the judges were:

Chuck Close, NY
Nayland Blake, NY
Paul Ha, MO (but he previously ran White Columns, so we'll call it NY)
Lyle Ashton Harris, NY
Barbara London, NY
Elizabeth Murray, NY
Martin Puryear, NY (although he is upstate)

So we had a grand total of seven New Yorkers choosing 3 New Yorkers and a guy in LA.

2003/2004 Winners

Diana Cooper, NY
Maria Elena Gonzalez, NY
Matvey Levenstein, NY
John Newman, NY

and the judges were:

Agnes Gund, NY
Dawoud Bey, Chicago!
Susan Crile, NY
Paul Ha, MO via NY
Barbara London, NY
Philip Pearlstein, NY
Jack Risley, NY

In this case we had six New Yorkers and a Chicagoan choose four New Yorkers.

You can draw your own conclusions, but my opinion is that it's all pretty much fixed, they all know each other and/or are somehow invested in each other's work, and if you live in Nebraska and have spent the past couple months researching Rome to best explain in your proposal how important it is in this stage of your career that you be in Rome, you're a sucker.

Are you listening, artists of Miami, Los Angeles, Texas, DC, Chicago, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Seattle, and everywhere else?
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