Avinoam Shalem Named Director of American Academy in Rome

The American Academy in Rome has appointed Avinoam Shalem as its new director for 2021, alongside a new cohort of fellows and a revised academic calendar delayed to January 2021 due to the pandemic. Shalem, a professor of Islamic art at Columbia University, aims to transform the Academy into a dynamic intellectual forum reminiscent of New York's East Village, Soho, Beirut, or Berlin. He plans to challenge Western classical canons by incorporating Islamic art as an extension of late classical Roman visual culture and introducing the concept of a "Black Mediterranean" to highlight Africa's role in shaping Mediterranean aesthetics. The Academy's 2021/2022 program focuses on ethics, addressing recent societal traumas including the Capitol Hill assault. Despite COVID-19 restrictions, the Academy maintains open doors on the Gianicolo hill, with its library accessible to Italian scholars and online lectures reaching 500–800 attendees. The fellowship program, titled "Back to the Normal, Back to B.C. (Before Covid Era)," includes four Italian fellows: Francesca Berni (architecture), Giuliana Mosca (Renaissance studies), Sara Enrico and Corinna Gosmaro (visual arts). Upcoming events include a February 2 online conversation with David Nirenberg on medieval, modern, and metaphorical ghettos. Shalem succeeds previous directors and inherits a legacy of critically revisiting the concept of the "Classical" in relation to colonialism and orientalism.