On behalf of the Board of Trustees and the Presidential Search Committee I am enormously pleased to announce the selection of Mark Robbins as the President and CEO-elect of the American Academy in Rome.

In January 2014 Mark will succeed Adele Chatfield-Taylor, FAAR'84, who has led the Academy for twenty-five remarkably transformative years.

Mark comes to the Academy as one of its own, having been the Marion O. and Maximilian E. Hoffman Foundation Rome Prize Fellow in Design in 1997. Since that time he has achieved extraordinary success as the first Curator of Architecture at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio; Director of Design for the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, DC; Dean of the School of Architecture and Senior Advisor on Architecture and Urban Initiatives at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York, and most recently as Executive Director of the International Center of Photography in New York City. Mark has had significant impact at each of these institutions - providing excellence in leadership, management and institutional advancement as well as intellectual and artistic content, while maintaining his own multidisciplinary practice, which bridges the fields of art, architecture, and critical theory.

Mark brings his record as an exceptional leader, administrator, educator, architect and artist to a position that must represent all that is the Academy and its legacy as the highest possible representation of excellence in scholarship and the arts. We believe Mark is the perfect person to lead us into the next era for the Academy, one that strengthens its international and national reach and maintains the dynamic community that has had such an impact on notable artists and scholars throughout the institution's illustrious history.

"We are extremely proud of Mark's outstanding and dedicated service to the many entities he has led, and we are delighted that he is returning to the Academy, where as a Fellow, he came into his own," said Adele Chatfield-Taylor. "Mark is one of the most enterprising and original figures of his generation. He is fascinated by the work of both artists and scholars, especially in the fields of our fellowships, and he will bring a fresh take to all sectors of our life. I look forward to working closely with him during the transition, and know he will take our beloved institution to a whole new level of excellence."

In Mark's words: "The Academy is an international site of scholarship and creativity. I am honored to lead the institution within an increasingly global, technological arena, building on the robust foundation secured through Adele's inspired work."

"Rome seems endless in depth" he continued, "offering vastly different fields of interpretation. The Academy must continue to attract the strongest, most diverse candidates across disciplines whose work makes the lessons of Rome a vibrant part of modern intellectual and creative life."

Mark's work includes his gallery exhibition and book Households, Guest | Host in Bangkok and Student-Teacher in Kigali, Rwanda and a solo show at Colgate University's Clifford Gallery in Hamilton, New York. Other installations and site-specific projects have been exhibited at the Adelaide Festival in Adelaide, Australia, the Museum of Modern Art in Saitama, Japan, the Queens Museum and the Clocktower Gallery in New York, and the Wexner Center for the Arts, and his public art project Import/Export was installed along the length of the Miami River in Miami, Florida. His work is represented in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and numerous private collections. A monograph on his work, Angles of Incidence, is published by Princeton Architectural Press.

In addition to the Rome Prize, Mark has received grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the NEA and the Graham Foundation; and artist fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts. He has been a Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University (2003) and the McDowell Colony (1990 and 2003), among other residencies.

He is a frequent juror, visiting critic, and lecturer on issues pertaining to art and design and a recipient of a 2008 American Institute of Architects New York Educators Award. He serves on boards including the Van Alen Institute, the New York Architectural League, AD Magazine in London, and Hong Kong University. He was a tenured associate professor at the Knowlton School of Architecture at The Ohio State University and distinguished visiting professor at the University of Virginia and the Georgia Institute of Technology, and visiting professor at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University and the Southern California Institute of Architecture.

Mark's selection is the culmination of an international search that began in January 2013; Mr. Robbins was chosen from a large field of outstanding candidates. I was honored to co-chair the Trustee Search Committee with William B. Hart, Chairman Emeritus; we were assisted by Isaacson, Miller.

We all look forward to another great chapter for the American Academy in Rome.

With best regards,

Mary Margaret Jones, FAAR'98, FASLA
Chair, Board of Trustees, American Academy in Rome
Sr. Principal and President, Hargreaves Associates