The American Academy in Rome has announced that Mark Robbins will take over as the academy's president and CEO in January. Robbins is succeeding Adele Chatfield-Taylor, who has held the position for 25 years.
The American Academy in Rome administers the Rome Prize, a fellowship awarded to about 30 artists and scholars in fields ranging from architecture, design, landscape architecture, literature, musical composition, and medieval studies. (Read about this year's class on ARCHITECT.)
Robbins is coming from the position of executive director for the International Center of Photography. He's also held several leadership positions in design and architecture, including director of design at the National Endowment for the Arts, and curator of architecture at the Wexner Center for the Arts. He also served as dean of the architecture school at Syracuse University, where he was instrumental in establishing the Warehouse, the school's 140,000 square foot space in downtown Syracuse, and oversaw the "From the Ground Up: Innovative Green Homes" competition, which R-House won in 2009. (Read ARCHITECT's profile of Robbins' work at Syracuse in December 2011.)
In 1997, he was the academy's Marion O. and Maximilian E. Hoffman Foundation Rome Prize Fellow in Design. He also received a American Institute of Architects New York Educators Award in 2008.
