“A Truly Liberal Orientation”: Laurance Roberts, Modern Architecture, and the Postwar

American Academy in Rome

Author(s): Denise R. Costanzo
Source: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians , Vol. 74, No. 2 (June 2015), pp.
223-247
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society of Architectural
Historians
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“A Truly Liberal Orientation”:
Laurance Roberts, Modern Architecture,
and the Postwar American Academy in Rome
denise r. costanzo
Pennsylvania State University
S
ince 1894, the American Academy’s Rome Prize has
sponsored extended residence in the Eternal City for
architects, artists, and humanities scholars. 1 The
Academy was originally established to promote Beaux-Arts
classicism, and it remained a bastion of the style through the
1930s, a period examined closely in Fikret K. Yegül’s foun-
dational 1991 study of the Academy’s architectural culture
(Figure 1).2 After World War II, as modernism gained wider
acceptance, this defining artistic paradigm became an anach-
ronism. Yet the Academy not only survived but also, argu-
ably, experienced its “golden age” during the postwar years.
Its resurgence can be attributed in large part to the efforts of
Laurance Page Roberts (1907–2002), Academy director
from 1946 to 1959, and his wife, Isabel Spaulding Roberts
(1911–2005) (Figure 2). Laurance Roberts, with support
from the Academy’s president, architect, and McKim, Mead
and White president James Kellum Smith (1893–1961),
enacted policy reforms that redefined the Rome Prize in the
visual arts and ended the Academy’s prohibition on modern-
ism. He also fought to rebuild its artistic prestige, a project
that included pursuit of an implausible goal: making the
Academy a desirable destination for modern architects.
This agenda would be manifested in how consistently
Rome Prize fellowships were awarded to young architects
associated with modernist design programs; in the Academy’s
new policy of creative freedom, which supplanted a deeply
entrenched, steadfastly conservative aesthetic orthodoxy;
and in Roberts’s beliefs about which senior architects should
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 74, no. 2 (June 2015),
223–247. ISSN 0037-9808, electronic ISSN 2150-5926. © 2015 by the Society
of ­Architectural Histo­rians. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for
permission to photocopy or reproduce ­article content through the University
of ­California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpress
journals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/jsah.2015.74.2.223.  He was also an early critic who had refused to support a 1924
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be affiliated with the Academy as residents and trustees.
­Collectively, these changes demonstrated Roberts’s intent to
align the Academy with American architecture’s new, mod-
ern direction and to liberalize an institutional culture for-
merly marked by traditionalism and insularity.
These efforts led to a backlash. Roberts and several
alumni clashed over how to balance the Academy’s pursuit of
cultural leadership with continuity of identity and mission.
My analysis of this pivotal period at a highly influential U.S.
cultural institution also poses a broader question: Is progres-
sive academy an oxymoron? Since seventeenth-century
France, academies have been exclusive, elite communities
that codify, preserve, and diffuse cultural eminence in archi-
tecture and other artistic and intellectual fields. Was the
Roberts Academy, remarkable for its openness and indeter-
minacy, “an academy in name only,” as Yegül suggests of its
late twentieth-century history?3 Or might it offer a model of
an alternative, “liberal” academicism?
A New Direction
While Roberts’s tenure is rightly considered a distinctly pro-
gressive period at the Academy, the 1945 appointment of
Charles Rufus Morey (1877–1955) as acting director already
heralded significant change.4 Morey had just retired as pro-
fessor of art history at Princeton to become the U.S. State
Department’s cultural officer in Rome; his interim Academy
position was a second, part-time role.5 The Academy had
closed in 1940 for the duration of World War II, and after
Rome’s 1944 liberation its facilities housed U.S. embassy
staff and American servicemen.6 Morey, who had served as
the Academy’s professor in charge of classical studies in
1925–26, provided useful familiarity with the institution.7
223
Figure 1  McKim, Mead and White, Main Building, American Academy in Rome, ca. 1925–30 (American Academy in Rome, Photographic Archive).

codification of Academy arts policies called “the Credo.”
A historian of late antique and medieval art, Morey objected
to the Credo’s insistence that classicism is the only model for
great art; although his view was not radical, the Academy’s
administration received his diplomatically expressed opin-
ions as heresy.8
In 1935, however, concerns about artistic decline at the
Academy spurred its new director, Chester Holmes Aldrich,
to examine the institution’s policies. He invited Henri
­Marceau, a 1925 Rome Prize fellow in architecture, Phila-
delphia Museum of Art curator, and the museum’s future
director, to assess the success of the Academy’s recent arts
fellows. Marceau reported:
Many important artists, who would otherwise be eligible, feel that
the Academy does not offer them the opportunity for original work.
Many prefer to travel and thus derive many of the advantages
offered by the Academy in Rome and yet remain free to interpret
their experiences their own way. These painters and sculptors seem
to be the ones whose work has been successfully received in the
current exhibitions of our Museums and Art Galleries.9
Along with this critique, Marceau documented a measurable
decline in professional success among fine arts fellows.
While the Academy was not yet ready to rethink its artistic
mission, by the end of the 1930s it was undeniable that a
Rome Prize in the arts did not correlate with the success the
prize’s founders had envisioned. That the Academy Board of
Trustees in New York, whose membership saw considerable
turnover during the war years, chose to put a former critic like
Morey in charge in 1945 indicates that fundamental change,
however unpalatable to some, was considered inevitable.
In 1945, as the Academy’s leaders prepared to reopen
Rome operations after the wartime hiatus, they considered
specific policy modifications. The Fine Arts Committee met
repeatedly, invited comments from Academy trustees and
alumni “in all the branches of the Arts,” and subsequently
offered five recommendations to the board.10 These included
allowing married artists (men and women) to receive fellow-
ships and inviting both American and European artists to the
Academy for short-term residencies. The committee’s final
suggestion was the “selection for director of a young ener-
getic layman with an understanding of scholarship and the
fine arts.”11 These proposals show that the Academy’s gov-
erning artists were ready to make far-reaching changes.
The call to select as director a layman—that is, someone
who was neither an artist nor a classicist—with  both

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Figure 2  Laurance and Isabel Roberts at the American Academy in
Rome, ca. 1959 (American Academy in Rome Records, 1855–ca. 1981,
bulk 1894–1946).
scholarly and artistic competence was a new idea. The Acad-
emy had been established by a circle of artists and patrons, of
whom the most ardent was architect Charles Follen McKim,
founding partner of McKim, Mead and White in New
York.12 The American School of Classical Studies in Rome
(ASCSR) was established in 1895. An agreement produced a
single academy in 1913 with two separate schools of fine arts
and classical studies, each with its own professor in charge,
overseen by one director. Such a bicameral institution should
have a director who reasonably knows both fields, or should
have leaders who alternate between them, but this had not
been the case at the beginning of the unified Academy. Its
first director from 1913 to 1917 was classicist Jesse Benedict
Carter, the ASCSR’s final head, who assumed the role after
artist Frank Millet, the intended appointee, perished on the
Titanic in 1912.13 Until Morey was appointed in 1945, all of
Carter’s successors were architects. The 1945 call for a direc-
tor representing both scholars and artists thus departed from
nearly thirty years of Academy practice.14
Laurance and Isabel Roberts knew scholarship and the art
scene well. They were art historians who met while working
at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, where in 1938 Laurance was
promoted from curator to become the nation’s youngest
museum director at age thirty-one. Isabel gave up her job
when they married but assumed her husband’s museum
directorship (at a reduced salary) from 1942 to 1946, during
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his war service in the U.S. Army’s Military Intelligence
branch. Laurance and Isabel thus possessed comparable
managerial and cultural experience. Both were active and
well connected in the arts and academia, and both had expe-
rience in managing a large, complex cultural institution.15
Neither had any direct connection to the Academy, although
Laurance had studied under Morey at Princeton, worked at
the Philadelphia Museum with Marceau, and served in Mili-
tary Intelligence with Academy president James Kellum
Smith.16 At age thirty-nine, he was “young” and “energetic”
and fulfilled the job description to the letter.
The Academy also implemented other proposed changes,
with a few exceptions. The postwar Rome Prize fellowships
would last one year, with a second year upon approval
(not  two with a possible third as suggested), and non-
American artists would not be eligible to be invited officially
until the 1960s.17 But allowing fellows to be married accommo­
dated a war generation that had postponed, then accelerated,
education, careers, and families. 18 Gender-inclusive arts
­fellowships also resolved a long-standing internal conflict.
The Beaux-Arts establishment behind the early Academy
was strongly chauvinistic, while women’s colleges, their stu-
dents, and female faculty were central to the ASCSR.19 The
1913 unification permitted women in classical studies but not
the fine arts and circumscribed their presence within Acad-
emy facilities (Figure 3).20 A critical 1939 report outlined
women’s second-class living conditions and how space limits
discriminated against female senior scholars.21 In 1945 some
alumni still insisted that “women must eat separately” or that
“men must have, at least, one meal together.”22 Although this
position did not prevail, only a handful of women received
arts fellowships before the 1970s, and in 1973 admission
of women to the fine arts was still viewed as “startling.”23
Nevertheless, ending formal discrimination and welcoming
spouses (usually wives) did help create a more gender-­
balanced environment (Figure 4).
Short-term artist residencies were part of a radically altered
supervisory structure for the fine arts. Formerly, a permanent
professor in charge oversaw fellows’ prescribed work (Figure 5).
After the war the Academy discontinued this position, ending
direct management of artistic work in Rome. Roberts assumed
some of the duties of the professor in charge, such as leading
field trips for arts fellows, while resident artists representing all
discplines provided short-term mentorship. Such rotating
appointments were flexible and strategically noncommittal on
artistic style while addressing concerns about rigidity and stag-
nation in the Academy’s creative culture.
After the Board of Trustees received the suggestions in
the 1945 report, President Smith reported to the Academy’s
Advisory Council and alumni about the institution’s postwar
future. He discussed the searches for a new director and a
professor in charge for classics, and he praised the Classical
“A T r u ly L i b e r a l O r i e n tat i o n ”    225
Figure 3  Fellows in main dining room,
American Academy in Rome, 1921
(American Academy in Rome,
Photographic Archive).

School committee’s planning work, but Smith was silent on

the fine arts recommendations.24 A few months later, soon
after Roberts accepted the invitation to become director in
1946, he received a letter from the Academy’s New York office
with comments on its “readjustment to post-bellum condi-
tions.” The letter described these comments (not preserved)
as “the fruit of a determined effort … to utilize the war
enforced lull to think through the unsolved problems of
[past] procedures. But more than a search for correctives of
past mistakes, if such there were, the endeavor was to draw
up a chart for the Academy’s future and the fuller role it
should play in relation to the practice of Fine Arts and the
pursuit of Classical scholarship in America.” Roberts was
informed that no proposal “pertaining to the School of Fine
Arts has been adopted by the Board.” He was also warned
that “some of the suggested reforms seem to cancel each
other out.”25
A majority of the board’s Fine Arts Committee must have
approved the proposed reforms, but the defensive tone of the
letter to Roberts shows that the Academy’s full leadership
remained divided. Roberts thus inherited unresolved dis-
agreements about the organization’s artistic future, including
the possibility that the Academy would eliminate the fine arts
entirely.26 This drastic option raised a valid question. There
Figure 4  Dining room, American Academy in Rome, 1948 (photo by
was no question that classicists, archaeologists, and art his- John Swope; courtesy John Swope Trust).
torians would benefit from time in Rome.27 The Academy’s
relevance to visual artists, however, was less clear.28 Restrict-
ing the Academy’s scope to humanities research would have sacrifice contemporary relevance. For a community that had
alienated half the alumni, abandoned the institution’s artistic defined itself as a bulwark against the “barbarian invasion” of
origins, and left the separate and much larger endowment of modernism, any change implied capitulation, even an unac-
the School of Fine Arts adrift. To remain, however, the ceptable admission of “past mistakes.”
School of Fine Arts had to either relinquish its defining rai- Despite the trustees’ apparent inaction, Roberts was
son d’être (the promotion of Beaux-Arts classicism) or empowered to implement most of the committee’s proposed

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Figure 6  Alfred H. Barr and Isabel S. Roberts, Villa Aurelia, Rome, 1948
(photo by John Swope; courtesy John Swope Trust).
changes and also to end the fellowship age limit of thirty.
In addition, while the Academy had no stated policies on race
or ethnicity, the first African Americans to receive Rome
Prizes did so during Roberts’s tenure as director.29 The selec-
tion process for visual arts fellows also changed. Instead of
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Figure 5  Olindo Grossi,
reconstruction of the Forum of
Julius Caesar, Rome, 1934
(American Academy in Rome,
Photographic Archive).
participating in a design competition judged by alumni and
trustees, applicants submitted statements outlining their rea-
sons for seeking a fellowship, samples of their work, and let-
ters of recommendation.30 Jury members varied from year to
year and included outside representatives of the appropriate
disciplines.
The postwar Academy’s renewed vigor was the result of
these many changes. The institution’s reputation also bene-
fited substantially and directly from the Robertses’ sophisti-
cation, hospitality, and generosity.31 A grandson of the
Pennsylvania Railroad’s founder, Laurance came from a
wealthy Philadelphia family. Isabel was a Vassar graduate
who declined a Carnegie Fellowship for graduate study
upon marriage. Their Academy residence, the refurbished
seventeenth-century Villa Aurelia, attracted an array of promi-
nent midcentury cultural figures. A steady calendar of teas,
concerts, dinners, and receptions provided the members of the
Academy community with enviable opportunities to interact
with such luminaries as Alfred H. Barr, Leonard Bernstein,
Pier Luigi Nervi, Isamu Noguchi, Gisela Richter, Iris Origo,
and Gian Carlo Menotti, to name only a few (Figure 6).
At the outset, however, some were alarmed by the
changes. In 1947 Arthur Deam (FAAR architecture 1926),
chair of design at the University of Pennsylvania, detected
“grave danger in this year’s [Rome Prize selection] method”
and warned Smith that projects from “certain schools” are
produced by critics, not students, who are “incapable of
doing the kind of work for which [they are] given credit.”
He added, “I hope after this year’s competition that we will
use a method similar to the Paris Prize in which the student’s
work alone is the factor in obtaining the scholarship.
No other basis of competing and judging will produce the
best men.” Deam then ignored this principle by nominating
“A T r u ly L i b e r a l O r i e n tat i o n ”    227
Figure 7  Walker O. Cain in his
American Academy studio, 1948
(photo by John Swope; courtesy
John Swope Trust).

two University of Pennsylvania alumni who had already
received special Academy wartime fellowships.32 Presi-
dent Smith urged patience, since “the experiment might
be informative.”33 The two men agreed that “no method
of selecting scholarship winners is fool-proof,” but Deam
might understandably have preferred tradition. As an
alumnus and head of a program that produced five of
thirty past Rome Prize architecture fellows, he was accus-
tomed to having his recommendation carry considerable
weight.34
Awarding fellowships to architects handpicked by alumni
would have also guaranteed the Academy could resume oper-
ations in the fall of 1947. In August 1946 it had announced
optimistically that it would reopen “on October 1, 1946 for
eleven holders of War-deferred Fellowships” and welcome
new Rome Prize fellows one year later.35 The 1946 deadline
was missed, and only one fellow, architect Walker Cain,
accepted a deferred prize in 1947 (Figure 7). As other
national academies opened, meeting the second target
became imperative. Soon after Deam wrote his letter, how-
ever, the decision of the architecture jury was postponed
because there were too few applicants.36 Despite the situa-
tion’s urgency, rather than draw upon alumni connections,
Roberts held fast to the new process. The outcome shows he
was determined to demonstrate that the Academy had
changed and now embraced its former adversary: modern
architecture.
Modernists on the Janiculum
In 1945, Olindo Grossi, then the Pratt Institute’s dean of
architecture and an Academy alumnus, suggested that “men

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Figure 8  American Academy fellows, spouses, and visitors at Bar
Gianicolo, Rome, 1948. Clockwise from left: Marion Kelleher, Dorothy
McGuire Swope, Patrick (“Joe”) Kelleher, Helen Thon, William Thon,
George Howe, Concetta Scaravaglione, and an unnamed woman
(photo by John Swope; courtesy John Swope Trust).
like Saarinen, Aalto, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies Van Der
Rohe and Le Corbusier [should] … visit the Academy to
stimulate the Fellows” (see Figure 5).37 Grossi’s vision of an
Academy that welcomed modern architects contrasted
with Deam’s reluctance to shed Beaux-Arts practices such
as placing limits on artistic media: painters no longer had
to be muralists, and sculptors were no longer required to
produce “monumental sculpture.” For architects, manda-
tory analytiques and reconstructions of ancient monuments
were discontinued, along with the chronically unpopular
collaborative design problem for interdisciplinary teams.
Restrictions on periods and topics were eliminated, as were
officially sanctioned styles.38 Postwar fine arts fellows were
free to use their time as they wished. The Academy con-
trolled only their stipends, housing support, and requests
for a second year in Rome.
These changes mark a definitive break with the Academy’s
former, traditionally “academic” creative framework
and tendency toward paternalistic, hierarchical, and authori-
tarian structures. The School of Classical Studies retained a
professor in charge to manage its ongoing excavations, but
two of its five fellowships became postdoctoral prizes.39
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­ ellows were no longer considered pupils to be supervised;
F
rather, they were part of a community of artists and scholars
at varying stages in their careers (Figures 8 and 9).
The Robertses established a collegial, open tone. Their
“deliberate laissez-faire” allowed “the new Academicians of
the post-war years [to] manage themselves. The students are
no longer treated as seminarians; they are recognized as
mature individuals.”40 Alumni praised how Roberts “had the
grace and wisdom to treat us as adults, to leave us to our
researches or our creative talents,” all the while “backing no
particular cult or school, loving the past, yet keeping a clear
and ever-alert, unprejudiced eye for the newest contempo-
rary development.”41 In 1956, visiting journalist Sylvia
Wright saw the Academy as “painstakingly sympathetic to
the idea that a Fellow, however earnest, may produce noth-
ing very definite in his first year… . This hands-off policy is
in the able hands of the present director, Laurance Page
Roberts … who presides with detachment, humor, and
grace.”42 Most former Academy directors had seen Rome as
an eternally authoritative foundation for cultural leader-
ship.43 Roberts’s expertise, in contrast, was in Asian art, and
he had traveled to Japan and China in the 1930s.44 This
global perspective informed his “uncommonly broad out-
look” on culture and creativity and his support for new, criti-
cal interpretations of the caput mundi.
Nonetheless, eliminating Beaux-Arts orthodoxy and pro-
viding an open forum for creative work could not make
the  American Academy in Rome a place with which
Le ­Corbusier, who called the Villa Medici (the French Academy
in Rome) “the cancer of French architecture,” might wish to
be associated.45 Despite his “hands-off ” approach, Roberts
took direct action to pursue an architectural agenda that was
consistent with Grossi’s hopes. In early 1947 Roberts met
with Dean Joseph Hudnut of Harvard’s Graduate School of
Design (GSD).46 Ten years earlier Hudnut had hired Bau-
haus founder Walter Gropius as the GSD’s chair of architec-
ture, thus equating the GSD’s midcentury program with
modernism. Roberts visited Harvard to promote the new
Academy, and the effort yielded results. Both new Rome
Prize architecture fellowships for 1947 went to GSD gradu-
ates; so did the only one awarded in 1948, as well as one of
the three bestowed in 1949.47 If Deam’s preferred candidates
did apply, this outcome suggests they had little chance.
The University of Pennsylvania program adopted a mod-
ernist direction in 1950 under G. Holmes Perkins, formerly
of Harvard. But no Penn graduates won a Rome Prize in
architecture until 1961, despite the Penn program’s history
of prewar success. Columbia University, whose design pro-
gram remained traditional until the late 1950s, experienced
the greatest decline. From 1894 through 1940, its graduates
won ten of the thirty Rome Prizes awarded overall, but not
one would receive a postwar architecture fellowship.48
“A T r u ly L i b e r a l O r i e n tat i o n ”    229
Figure 9  Academy fellows and
residents in the fine arts, Villa
Capponi, Florence, 17 October
1947. Left to right: Albert Wein,
Henry McIlhenny, Walker Cain,
Charles Wiley, Concetta
Scaravaglione, Patrick (“Joe”)
Kelleher, William Thon, Laurance
Roberts, and Frederic Coolidge
(Laurance and Isabel Roberts
Papers, Biblioteca Berenson,
Villa I Tatti: The Harvard University
Center for Italian Renaissance
Studies, Florence; photo by Isabel
Roberts; courtesy of the President
and Fellows of Harvard College).

Harvard assumed its dominant position: GSD alumni won
nine of the thirty architecture fellowships awarded from
1947 through 1960 (only one had received a prewar Rome
Prize). Graduates of the Massachusetts Institute of Technol-
ogy, led by West Coast modernists William Wurster (1945–
51) and Pietro Belluschi (1951–65), earned four Rome Prizes
in architecture during this period. So did four Princeton
graduates, Robert Venturi among them. Princeton’s midcen-
tury program under Jean Labatut is best known for empha-
sizing history, but it taught modern design by the late 1940s.
Graduates of Yale, which produced seven prewar architec-
ture fellows, won five Rome Prizes in the period 1947–60.49
Although Yale’s architecture dean Everett Meeks was part of
the Academy’s traditionalist old guard, Yale’s program had
welcomed modernists as visiting critics since the 1930s.
This suggests a bias in favor of the best-known modernist
programs in the United States, especially Harvard’s, and
against Columbia and Penn, top Beaux-Arts schools that
were slow to adopt modern architecture after the war.
­Significantly, Yale’s postwar Rome Prize architects all won
after 1950, the year Philadelphia modernist George Howe
became chair of the Yale Department of Architecture.
He assumed this position after returning from Rome, where
he had served as the Academy’s first architect in residence
from March 1948 to December 1949 (Figure 10).50 Howe’s
residency and the predominance of graduates from modern-
ist architecture programs show that Roberts was intent on
aligning the Academy with modern architecture. The two
strategies intersected: one GSD graduate’s only recorded
motivation for seeking his 1947 Rome Prize was the chance
to be at the Academy with Howe.51
Architecture was one of six fields in the postwar Acade-
my’s School of Fine Arts, which was one administrative half
of the institution, but it was undoubtedly the Academy’s most
powerful discipline.52 In addition to the Academy’s uninter-
rupted sequence of architect-directors from 1917 through
1940, the presidency of the Board of Trustees was held by
architects for the institution’s first sixty-four years.53 In 1947
the twenty-three-member board included six architects, five
other artists, and three classicists.54 Artists vastly outnum-
bered representatives of the Academy’s scholarly half, and
architecture carried more weight than all the other arts
combined.
Relevance to contemporary architecture was a clear prior-
ity for Roberts.55 In his first letter to Howe, he stated that his
residency “is a guarantee that the Academy will be a force in
contemporary architecture, and gives it a distinction it could
have in no other way.”56 Two weeks later Roberts wrote to
Howe again: “What you are giving the Academy through
your reputation, your knowledge, and your presence there
[in Rome] is of enormous value. If the Academy is to mean
anything to contemporary architecture, it will be due first of
all to you.”57 Like Roberts, Howe had no prior involvement
with the Academy. After his early Beaux-Arts career, Howe
gained international prominence in 1929, at age forty-two,
when he “converted” from eclecticism to modernism and

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Figure 10  George Howe at the American Academy in Rome, 1948
(photo by John Swope; courtesy John Swope Trust).
entered into partnership with Swiss architect William
­Lescaze (1896–1969). Their work was included in the
Museum of Modern Art’s seminal 1932 show International
Architecture: An Exhibition, joining the modernist canon. The
exhibition, the accompanying catalog, and Henry-Russell
Hitchcock and Philip Johnson’s book The International Style
gave Howe visibility and legitimacy among the growing
number of North American architects embracing the mod-
ern movement.58
Howe promoted modern architecture through dozens of
published articles and a series of visible appointments.59
In March 1947, the month he was contacted by Roberts,
Howe became director of the competition for the Jefferson
Memorial Expansion Monument in St. Louis, which was won
by Eero Saarinen’s Gateway Arch; the competition helped
make modernism acceptable as a national symbolic language.
On top of his modernist credentials and public stature,
Howe possessed “aristocratic” charm and diplomacy; Philip
Johnson called him “the greatest gentleman we’ve ever had
in architecture.”60 His patrician manner was an asset in his
gaining acceptance from the Academy’s establishment,
including its conservative board. 61 That Howe was a
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native-born American in a movement led by émigrés was also
crucial, since the Academy did not support non–U.S. citizens
until the 1960s.62 For a prominent modernist of international
reputation, Howe was also unusually available. In 1945, he
left his wartime government position for private practice, but
he had little success.63 The arrangement was therefore mutu-
ally beneficial: Howe weathered a professional dry spell, and
the Academy found its modernist figurehead.64
The board eventually granted Howe a second four-month
residency, from October to February 1948, and Roberts
allowed him to reside at the Academy for almost twenty
months, well beyond his official eight-month appointment.65
While in Rome, Howe supported himself by designing a new
U.S. consulate in Naples. In late 1949 Howe received an
invitation to become chair of Yale’s Department of Architec-
ture at a moment when the consulate project hit a complica-
tion; he passed the commission to a Roman architect and left
Rome for New Haven.66 The Academy’s Centennial Directory
lists Howe as resident architect for three years, 1947–50, his
unofficial final months apparently deemed sufficient to cover
1949–50, the year Roberts began making arrangements with
Howe’s successor.
Kahn and the Early 1950s
While Howe’s lengthy presence helped change the Academy’s
architectural identity, the much shorter stay of Louis Kahn
is far more renowned. Neil Levine claims that Kahn’s
­residency removed “the stigma of regressive conservatism
from the Academy’s reputation and helped make Rome once
again the place to go in the minds of a younger generation of
architects.”67 Some accounts mistakenly call Kahn a fellow
rather than a resident, an understandable error since Kahn
initially applied for a Rome Prize fellowship in 1947. He did
so at the urging of Howe and Johnson, who believed they
could guarantee the result.68
The board’s Fine Arts Committee, however, blocked
Kahn’s application. A letter from the committee chair, land-
scape architect Michael Rapuano, explained that fellowships
were intended to be awarded to “promising young men at the
beginning of their architectural careers rather than to older
members of the profession with a background of successful
and distinguished practice.” He suggested that Kahn come
as a resident, an opportunity for “architects of your age and
distinction to visit Rome.”69 Although an official age limit
was no longer in force, Kahn, at forty-six, was considered too
old for a fellowship.
This standard was not applied consistently: in 1947, a
Rome Prize went to sculptor Concetta Scaravaglione, the first
ever to a female artist (Figure 11). At forty-seven, Scarava-
glione was one year older than Kahn and better established
professionally.70 The Fine Arts Committee might have decided
“A T r u ly L i b e r a l O r i e n tat i o n ”    231
Figure 11  Concetta Scaravaglione in
her American Academy studio, 1948
(photo by John Swope; courtesy
John Swope Trust).

to award a Rome Prize to a woman artist to publicize the
­Academy’s new gender policy. Scaravaglione’s prize attained
headline status in national art journals, and the Academy took
the unprecedented step of announcing, along with the Rome
Prize winners in architecture, that “Miss Ilse Meissener,
a graduate of Pratt Institute in 1946, was given honorable
mention and named first alternate.”71 That Scaravaglione was
an “older member of the profession with a background of suc-
cessful and distinguished practice” may have even been neces-
sary to convince certain jurors of her eligibility.72
Whether or not Kahn knew about this inconsistency, he
agreed enthusiastically to become Howe’s successor in Rome
and inquired how to apply for a residency.73 Howe explained
that Kahn should allow him and Johnson to recommend him;
Howe wrote to Roberts the same day that “it would be dif-
ficult to find a more stimulating personality [than Kahn] to
preside over the meditations and studies of the young men.”74
Roberts and the board apparently accepted the recommen-
dation, although Howe’s extended stay postponed the need
to select a successor for nearly two years, thereby delaying
Kahn’s residency.
In December 1949, Academy secretary Mary Williams con­
veyed Roberts’s hope that Kahn would come for six months
under a Fulbright grant, which would subsidize his transporta-
tion and up to a year of support.75 Bringing Kahn under the
Fulbright program would have spared the Academy, finan-
cially strained by Italy’s postwar inflation, the expense of his
residency.76 Roberts served on the Italian Fulbright Board
from 1949 to 1959; in the period 1949–51, the Fulbright
Board awarded 41 of 274 total grants to applicants coming to
the Academy.77 Kahn did not apply in 1949 as requested, but
he was again invited to the Academy in 1950 and agreed to

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 Figure 12  Joseph Amisano,
Dorothy Amisano, Spero Daltas,
Louis Kahn, and Fritz Sippel on a
hotel balcony in Delphi, Greece,
1951 (photo by George Patton;
George Patton Collection,
Architectural Archives, University
of Pennsylvania).

Figure 13  Louis Kahn (lower right)

at the Temple of Apollo, Corinth,
1951 (photo by George Patton;
George Patton Collection,
Architectural Archives, University
of Pennsylvania).

come that fall.78 He initially planned to sail to Naples in Sep-
tember, but instead he flew into Rome on 1 December 1950
and left Europe by ocean liner in late February 1951.79
Roberts’s dogged pursuit of Kahn shows he wanted to
continue the Academy’s association with modern architects.
Although Kahn’s residency was only three months long, it
had a profound effect on the Academy’s architects. Five
months after Kahn left Rome, Roberts wrote to Kahn:
“As you know all too well, people can get very stodgy here
and become intellectually stale. You gave the Academy just
the right shot in the arm and gave the architects the most
exciting winter that any group has had here since I’ve been
in Rome.”80 In his report for 1950–51, Roberts described
Kahn’s trip to Egypt and Greece, taken with architecture
fellows Spero Daltas and Joseph Amisano, Amisano’s wife,
Dorothy, landscape architecture fellow George Patton, and
architect Fritz Sippel, holder of the Lloyd Warren/Paris
Prize, as “the high point in the Academy’s postwar history”
(Figures 12 and 13).81
The architect who succeeded Howe and Kahn was a less
familiar figure. Frederick Woodbridge, partner in a mod-
estly successful New York firm, lacked national stature,
creative vigor, and modernist credentials.82 He had a Ful-
bright grant, however, which saved Roberts the expense of
a resident for 1951–52. Woodbridge was also an Academy
alumnus, which undoubtedly pleased the board. The fol-
lowing year’s resident architect had a stronger, but primar-
ily academic, reputation. Princeton’s Jean Labatut was
both a Beaux-Arts graduate and active in modernist circles,
making him an appealing candidate to many parties.83 His
first residency occurred in 1953, and he returned in 1959,
1964, and 1968.

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 The resident architect for spring 1954, Pietro Belluschi,
dean of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, bridged
academia and practice. Belluschi brought an established
reputation for modern design, an elite university affiliation,
and an increasingly powerful position in the postwar
­profession.84 Following Belluschi’s stay, the 1954–55 Rome
Prize brochure confidently touted the residency program:
“To help and advise the architects in their study and travel,
the Academy invites a prominent architect to be in residence
for part of each year.”85 Ironically, that year was the begin-
ning of the program’s nadir. After Belluschi, the Academy
had three consecutive years—1954 to 1957—without any
official resident architect, a gap that has never been discussed
or explained.
Counterreformation
The postwar Academy enjoyed larger numbers of Rome
Prize applications and a soaring reputation among U.S. and
European cultural institutions. Not everyone associated with
the Academy was pleased by its new direction, however, and
its records reveal several internal disagreements. In 1950,
sculptor and trustee Paul Manship wrote to President Smith
from Rome to complain that the sculpture fellows’ work
could as well be carried on in Kalamazoo or Kiokut, and
[is] not clearly related to Rome and what the academy stands
for. I mean, in a word, confusion has been here created where
every effort might be given to encourage study of the Classics
whether Greek, Rome—or Renaissance, and I wish more insis-
tence might be made to that purpose, —and so—the Commit-
tees who make up the Art juries should be carefully studied.
Let us not put too much store in those of the “fresh new spirit.”
Those men like yourself and we who are alumni—know better
what the Academy should stand for, than the outsiders, how-
ever interested and talented.86
Smith’s thoughtful response to Manship reveals his own view
of the Academy’s mission and transformation. He noted
that his loyalty to the Academy was based on two points:
“an absolute conviction of the importance to Western cul-
ture of the Classical tradition, and further … the belief of the
absolute freedom of the artist in Rome.” Smith defined this
creative freedom as the opportunity to find inspiration from
any facet of classicism, not necessarily connected to Rome,
any single era, or a specific interpretation.87
Yet Smith was pragmatic about how such a position would
affect the Academy’s survival in an age of “world-wide rebel-
lion” when young artists were “indoctrinated” against classicism:
Our institution is confronted, it seems to me, with the practical
problem of how to attract the most vital of the youngsters, and
expose them to [the Academy’s] freedom and its influences and
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opportunities, hoping that the vaccination will take… . I don’t
believe that we can force them [to study classicism], and I don’t
think we should try; otherwise gone would be the freedom. But
I do hope we can lead them, excite them, inspire them, and rely
upon the forces of the cultural influences themselves to do the
rest… . We may have made mistakes, and may make others,
but it seems to me that in the process a considerable amount
of vitality is being pumped into the veins of our beloved acad-
emy; this should be worth the best effort of all of us.88
Smith’s meditation on the Academy’s most basic issue—why
artists belong in Rome—betrays profound ambivalence. While
Manship privileged authoritatively upholding classical tradition,
Smith, despite obvious hesitancy (he used the qualifier “it seems
to me” six times in his letter), was willing to emphasize creative
freedom. This was an act of loyalty to ensure his “beloved acad-
emy’s” survival, taken out of faith that a dose of Rome would
eventually enrich artists of the current generation and their suc-
cessors. It is important to note that Smith never mentioned
modernism in his correspondence with Manship; rather, he
focused only on his ideal of the artist’s independence.
Another philosophical divergence emerged in a discus-
sion between Roberts and Smith concerning the Academy
Board of Trustees. In 1951, Walker Cain, the architect who
accepted his postponed prewar Rome Prize in 1947, was
nominated for a seat on the board. Roberts noted with con-
cern Cain’s youth “in age and reputation.” Cain was thirty-
three and had spent his entire career at McKim, Mead and
White, a Beaux-Arts firm struggling to adapt to modern
practice.89 Roberts tactfully made no direct objection to Cain
(who was Smith’s colleague) but stated that “for the future
when another architect is considered, now that we have a
younger man, I think a man of national reputation should be
kept in mind.”90 Smith explained the trustees’ concern about
the board’s future: “The desirability of further window dress-
ing of national figures as against that of attracting to the
Board people who know the institution, believe in it, and are
willing to work hard for it, was debated.”91 He also empha-
sized the value of adding to the board someone who would
take service to the Academy seriously.92 He left unmentioned
Cain’s rare combination of youth, loyalty, and conservatism.
The only architect-trustee then qualifying as “window dressing”
was Howe, appointed in 1950. Apparently, some objected to
his effect on the board’s direction.
Roberts’s desire to see the Academy affiliated with promi-
nent architects, versus the board’s interest in dedication and
continuity, resurfaced in a 1953 disagreement over architec-
ture residents. Smith had recommended a friend, Atlanta
architect Henry Toombs, who, while “conservative in back-
ground and training, [was] making an interesting transition
to modern trends.” Smith wrote to Roberts that Toombs’s
appointment “would, I am confident, have the unanimous
 support of the Committee on Fine Arts, by whom he is well
known and respected. But since we have set up the procedure
that such recommendations should originate with you, I am
referring the name to you, and advising Henry in accordance
with the enclosed letter that I am doing so.”93 Toombs was a
Penn graduate who had worked for Academy trustee Eric
Gugler at McKim, Mead and White in the 1920s. His own
firm had just formed a partnership with fellow Joseph Ami-
sano (one of Kahn’s traveling companions) that became
Toombs, Amisano and Wells. They had built several modern
projects in the Atlanta area and would later receive national
recognition for their work.94
As is indicated by the process through which Howe and
Kahn were nominated, potential residents were often identi-
fied through internal recommendations. Smith may have
assumed that securing an invitation for his friend was only a
formality, but Roberts saw things differently. He replied to
Smith: “I would have been delighted to have considered
Mr. Toombs for next year (I have met him several times in
New York and thought him charming, and I have always heard
the very best things of his work).” Unfortunately, Roberts
demurred, he had already invited Belluschi and theater set
designer Donald Oenslager of Yale, a 1954 resident in design
arts. “Both men have been on the panel for some time.
­Belluschi has since replied that he is interested.” Thus, the
Academy had its quota for 1953–54, but “should Mr. Toombs
be able to wait, I should certainly like to keep his appointment
in mind.”95 Roberts’s views on Cain’s trusteeship show his
position on connected insiders in visible roles. To him, famous
modern architects provided more than “window dressing”;
they helped demonstrate the Academy’s creative relevance.
Smith’s reply to Roberts reveals the only conflict in their
voluminous and otherwise cordial correspondence.96 He pre-
dicted, “I sense that some stormy weather is ahead for the
Academy Administration.” Unfortunately, the Toombs nom-
ination coincided with two other issues. An Academy board
member had been confronted by publishing magnate Henry
Luce, who was outraged by reports that Roberts had publicly
criticized the 1953 appointment of his wife, Clare Boothe
Luce, as U.S. ambassador to Italy. In addition, Smith had just
learned that some Trustees representing artistic philosophies
with which they believe you have been unsympathetic, if not
actually antagonistic, to the detriment of a truly liberal orienta-
tion of the Academy, are now meeting and organizing—
perhaps a friendly, perhaps a very unfriendly opposition… .
But your letter explaining that you cannot accommodate an
architect of Henry Toombs’ stature and record of collaboration
with painters, sculptors and landscape architects … is not
going to make matters easier.97
The festering dissatisfaction of Manship and like-minded
allies had erupted into an open challenge to the Academy’s
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postwar policies. Roberts’s alleged opposition to Clare
Boothe Luce had fanned their smoldering resentment; the
Toombs rejection would, Smith threatened, add fuel to the
fire.
Roberts defended himself in diplomatic language that
belied much stronger feelings.98 He wrote that he had already
explained to the trustee in question that he and Isabel had
expressed no personal opinions but had merely, when asked,
summarized Italian news stories reporting popular objec-
tions to a female U.S. ambassador.99 Roberts reminded Smith
of his stated regret about Toombs, reiterating that he was
bound by prior commitments. He added that he was “at a loss
to account for” the gathering opposition, noted that all his
decisions had been transparent, and offered his record as his
only defense:
Since every appointment and all policy have always been
cleared through the Board it is rather difficult to see what the
actual objections may be. Further, I can but say that the present
reputation of the Academy both at home and abroad should be
ample proof of my wholehearted attempt during these past six
and a half years to establish a “truly liberal orientation.”100
This last phrase, taken from Smith’s summary of the protest-
ing trustees’ views, captures the heart of the matter. For
­Roberts, a “truly liberal orientation” entailed direct associa-
tion with ascendant and forward-looking cultural ideas,
­people, and movements. It also meant reversing the Academy’s
reputation as an insular club by welcoming outsiders
whose worth was established externally. For Manship and
his allies, a “liberal orientation” should accommodate ­minority
views like their own instead of substituting a new orthodoxy—
modernism—for a past one. The subtext of the controversy
was a fervent hope that the trustees’ now-­marginalized
­aesthetics would regain a place in “their” Academy.
Smith’s follow-up letter characterized their objections as
“a fear that in trying to correct a pre-war intolerance for
non-traditional work, we have gone to the other extreme and
are fostering an atmosphere of intolerance for traditional
work.” He noted that many trustees had approved the Acad-
emy’s postwar changes reluctantly, and on the understanding
that both modernists and traditionalists would remain wel-
come in Rome. Roberts’s consistent preference for modern-
ists—seen directly in his choice of architecture residents and
indirectly in the selections of the Rome Prize architecture
juries he helped shape—left them ready to reverse direc-
tion.101 Smith added: “It would be a mistake to think that they
represent only a minority of the Board… . A re-examination
of policies at some stage was implied in all of our post-war
experiments.”102
Smith revisited the Toombs issue with a tinge of bitter-
ness, noting that Toombs’s residency would have required no
“A T r u ly L i b e r a l O r i e n tat i o n ”    235
Figure 14  Daniel Stewart, project
for Enrico Fermi Memorial
Pavilion, ca. 1957 (American
Academy in Rome, Photographic
Archive).

financial support “because he is doing a military cemetery.

From my point of view an important opportunity to leaven
the run of architectural teachers and theorists had been
lost.”103 Both men framed this issue selectively. Smith
ignored the fact that Kahn, Belluschi, and Woodbridge had
active practices, and Roberts probably exaggerated his inabil-
ity to accommodate Toombs.104 Woodbridge’s residency
undoubtedly signified very different things to each of them:
for Roberts, it was an unfortunate, expedient concession; for
Smith, it provided a legitimating precedent for his request.
A Toombs residency might also have eased Smith’s thankless
job of mediating between Roberts and the board. Further, in
asking Roberts to invite his friend Toombs, Smith had made
a rare request for a personal favor after eight years of staunch
support.
Roberts and Smith’s friendship survived the disagree-
ment. The backlash culminated in a letter from “nine friends
and former Fellows” of the Academy in May 1953 that
­proposed reversing a number of revised School of Fine Arts
policies.105 It showed greatest concern with painters and
sculptors, requesting that they be subject to “certain mini-
mum requirements of work.”106 The Academy’s annual exhi-
bitions, however, usually featured very few contributions
from architects compared to the numbers from visual artists.
Many painters and sculptors used their time and studio space
in Rome to produce numerous works. The architects,
­however, tended to travel, sketch, and take photographs, pro-
ducing comparatively few architectural projects (Figures 14
Figure 15  View of Amalfi, 23 March 1948 (photo by Walker O. Cain;
and 15). This lack of productivity may have preserved them Walker O. Cain Collection, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library,
from notice, since it provided few opportunities for trustees Columbia University).
to assess whether architects were learning the “right” lessons
in Rome.
After four meetings, the Fine Arts Committee sent Smith it firmly restated the Academy’s postwar philosophy “of
its response to the friends’ letter in January 1954. In mollify- complete artistic freedom,” affirming that fellows were
ing language, the committee promised to address certain chosen for their capacity for independent work and should
issues informally, but it made no policy reversals.107 Instead, be given the liberty to define and pursue their own projects.

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The committee concluded by addressing Smith and Rob-
erts directly:
We believe that you, Sir, and the Director have brought the
Academy to a position of eminence, both here and abroad,
unsurpassed since its founding. We believe that this has been
accomplished by following, not a restrictive course, but—far
more difficult—a course of enlightened artistic liberalism.
We believe that this course is wholly consonant with the ideals
of the Founders.108
In this battle over defining an “enlightened” and “artistically
liberal” academy, Roberts’s position prevailed. The founders’
ideals were interpreted not as a requirement to create a “fair
and balanced” institution with guaranteed representation of
minority artistic views, but as a commitment to openness and
currency. The letter, approved unanimously by the commit-
tee, is the last recorded word on the conflict.109 Yet this 1953
battle to define the Academy’s character provided the backdrop
against which Roberts unsuccessfully pursued architecture resi-
dents for the next three years, from 1954 to 1957.
Standoff
The year following this incident, 1954–55, would be the first
of three with no official architect in residence at the Acad-
emy, although during that first year there was an unofficial
Italian resident, Milan architect Ernesto Nathan Rogers of
the firm BBPR. In this period, Robert Venturi held a two-
year fellowship, during which he and the other architecture
fellows interacted closely with Rogers during his multiple
trips to the Academy in 1954–55. Venturi wrote enthusiasti-
cally about Rogers, who directly influenced his thinking.110
The other architecture fellows also praised him highly in
their renewal requests.111
In a letter to Smith, Roberts credited the architecture
­fellows with the idea to invite Rogers.112 Later, when con-
firming Rogers would come in January, Roberts added,
“Rogers is, as you know, about the most respected architect
in Italy by the younger generation,” a tacit contrast with
Toombs’s comparative obscurity.113 Roberts later reported
that Rogers had “supervised a collaborative project for the
fine arts fellows,” proposing use of the Academy’s garden for
additional studios (Figures 16 and 17).114 Since the Fine Arts
Committee’s response to the attempted counterreformation
included a promise to “encourage and foster” collaborative
work, this might have been a calculated suggestion from
Roberts.
Roberts may have considered Rogers’s unofficial presence
to be sufficient for 1954–55 (much like Howe’s final “year”),
but the records are silent as to why no American architect
was in residence that year. They do, however, show that the
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following year Roberts actively sought an American architect
of international stature. A March 1956 letter from Venturi
disclosed Roberts’s intentions:
Dear Lou:
The many of us here who know you were very sorry to find on
Lawrence’s [sic] return from New York early this month that
you (and no other architect for that matter) had not been
invited here by the Academy for a period this spring, after
Eero’s last minit [sic] notice that he would not come.115
“Lou” is certainly Kahn. “Eero” could only be Eero ­Saarinen.
Two months earlier, Venturi had told his parents: “We still
don’t know who the visiting architect will be here this spring.
Ernesto Rogers should be stopping in from Milan, but he
has been ill. It might be Eero Saarinen or Lou Kahn. I am
(discreetly) rooting for the latter.”116
Ever since Saarinen made a brief Academy visit in 1951,
Roberts had promoted him for a residency. He reported to
Smith Saarinen’s ability “to generate such real enthusiasm
and excitement among the Fellows, both new and old,” and
his “most telling way of pointing out what lessons [Rome’s
monuments] had for a present day architect.” 117 Smith
agreed that Saarinen should be added to the list of potential
residents.118
Saarinen apparently agreed to come during 1955–56,
then backed out. Fellow Warren Platner, who (like Venturi)
worked for Saarinen before receiving the Rome Prize, wrote
to him from the Academy: “Laurance Roberts has, I think,
just written to you about your coming here this spring.
As you requested, I mentioned to him some time ago that
I thought there might be a possibility that you could not
come and I think that is the reason for his letter to you
now as he is making final plans for the rest of the year.”
Platner expressed his hope that Saarinen still might come,
adding, “I think you would find [the fellows] interesting
as they are quite a mixed group but are constantly exchang-
ing ideas. Incidentally, one of the sculptors here (Hadzi)
is about to exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in
New York, in April I beleive [sic]; his work is quite mature
and he is full of ideas.”119 ­Platner implied a stay would be
creatively stimulating for Saarinen, and therefore worth
the increasingly valuable time of one of America’s best-
known architects, who appeared on Time magazine’s cover
that summer.120
Saarinen was already planning to travel to London to
work on his recently won U.S. embassy project. But his reply
to Platner was noncommittal about the Academy, a topic that
was clearly less of a priority for him than his wife Aline’s
planned visit to critic Bernard Berenson in Florence.121 The
Saarinens went to Italy during the summer of 1956, but not
to Rome, no doubt to Roberts’s great disappointment.
“A T r u ly L i b e r a l O r i e n tat i o n ”    237
Figure 16  Fellows’ work (project by Robert Venturi visible at center rear), Annual Exhibition, American Academy in Rome, 1955 (American Academy
in Rome, Photographic Archive).

Figure 17  Robert Venturi, model, project for new studios in the American Academy garden, Rome, 1955 (American Academy in Rome,
Photographic Archive).

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 ­ urthermore, that fall Roberts’s efforts to secure noted critic
F Mumford’s cancellation for the year following; he may have
Lewis Mumford as a resident for 1956–57 fell through when
Mumford canceled a planned winter stay for family reasons.
While Mumford suggested that he “might briefly [be] in
Rome in the Spring,” Roberts described himself as ­“distressed
about this as everyone is looking forward to seeing him here,
and as I have counted on his being at the Academy.” 122
­Mumford traveled extensively in Italy during the summer of
1957, including a stay in Rome, but he did not go to the
Academy until the late 1960s.123
For architects during the postwar building boom, a few
months in Rome offered little direct benefit to their
careers.124 The Academy, shed of many conservative associa-
tions, had become a more vital, well-connected place, but it
remained peripheral to architecture’s emerging modernist
establishment in the mid-1950s, and its aura was insufficient
to draw Saarinen from Tuscany, or Mumford from the other
side of Rome. It is not clear why Kahn, despite his creatively
fruitful sabbatical, did not return in 1956 as Venturi had
hoped.125 Kahn’s accelerating practice may have been a fac-
tor, or Roberts may not have been allowed to invite him.
Kahn’s archive contains no record of Academy invitations or
other contact from the time of his one stint on the 1952
Rome Prize jury until 1959. While Kahn’s modernism may
have still been an issue, his foreign birth, Jewish background,
and unpolished persona probably made him less attractive
than the patrician Howe to some members of the Academy
community. His renewed welcome in 1959, which included
speaking at the annual alumni gathering that year, frequent
invitations to his top employees to apply for fellowships, and
an open invitation to stay at the Academy whenever he
wished, reflects both how advantageous his soaring reputa-
tion made the association and how the Academy community
was evolving, with the old guard gradually being supplanted
by a new generation.126
End of an Era
The Academy’s long drought in architecture residencies
ended in 1957–58 with the appointment of Princeton archi-
tecture professor and lithographer Francis Comstock.127
Whatever Comstock’s virtues as a resident, his architectural
reputation was limited, another defeat for Roberts and his
quest to bring architects of national standing to the Academy.
After winning his 1953 battle with the “friends,” Roberts
aimed high. It is possible that Saarinen initially agreed to
come for 1954–55, then postponed. Roberts then arranged
for Rogers’s “backdoor” residency rather than call on Toombs
or anyone else connected to the board. In 1956, when
­Saarinen backed out and the trustees refused to support
Kahn, Roberts decided to stand on principle and accept an
architect-free year. Small wonder he was “distressed” at
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been too discouraged to arrange for a substitute. Three years
after a seemingly decisive victory in the battle over the Acad-
emy’s soul, Roberts was losing the war.
Comstock’s successor in 1958 was Nathaniel Owings,
founding partner of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM)—
quite prominent professionally, if not a star designer like
Saarinen. But Roberts did not arrange this residency: Owings
was invited by Michael Rapuano, Owings’s former Cornell
classmate and the Academy’s new president. 128 In 1958,
Smith retired from the presidencies of both the Academy and
McKim, Mead and White; the latter presidency passed to
Walker Cain.129 The following summer, Roberts announced
his resignation. Rapuano was one of the “friends” who had
tried to roll back the postwar policy changes. In 1957,
trustee and Roberts supporter Francis Henry Taylor
described the board as “a sounding board for the airing of
grievances, many of them imaginary and some of them,
unfortunately, the result of personal vendettas and petty
jealousies and disappointments.”130 Three years after the
attempted counter­reformation was defeated, some trustees
were still grumbling. In 1953, before that outcome was
­certain, Isabel Roberts recounted a conversation between
Laurance and Taylor, “who feels that it will be a tough
struggle with the great reactionary boys but that they—L.’s
side—will win. But we must remember who signed the
C. Com. recommendations: Faulkner, Waugh, Rapuano,
Moore, Gugler.”131
Certain Academy traditions returned under Rapuano.
The next director, Richard Kimball (1960–65), was an archi-
tect; although not an alumnus, he was the professional part-
ner of one of the “reactionary boys,” trustee Eric Gugler.132
The uninterrupted sequence of 1960s architecture residents
included Edward Durrell Stone (1960), Max Abramovitz
(1961), and Edward Larrabee Barnes (1967). Two more
obscure figures—Roy Larson (1962) and James Hunter
(1963)—had powerful behind-the-scenes roles: Hunter was
chair of the AIA’s Committee on the Profession, and Larson
was an adviser to the State Department’s influential embassy
building program.133 By then, modern architecture had
become America’s official design language. A collaborative
project, produced during Comstock’s residency, audaciously
inserted a pavilion in New Formalist style in Rome’s Piazza
Colonna, next to the Column of Marcus Aurelius and facing
the Palazzo Chigi, residence of Italy’s prime minister—an
intrusion suggesting a specifically Cold War form of American
cultural hubris (Figure 18).
After Roberts’s departure the American Academy argu-
ably continued in the progressive direction he had estab-
lished in many crucial ways. The Rome Prize continued to
provide fine arts fellows with complete creative freedom,
even as uncertainty about this “liberal” approach continued
“A T r u ly L i b e r a l O r i e n tat i o n ”    239
Figure 18  “Proposed Development of Piazza Colonna, Rome” (United States Information Agency), Collaborative Problem, 1958 (American
Academy in Rome, Photographic Archive).

into the 1970s.134 Residencies by famous architects were only

rarely interspersed with those by insiders.135 The clearest
example is Venturi’s return as a resident in 1966, just before
the appearance of his epochal book Complexity and Contradic-
tion in Architecture and his first, momentous trip to Las Vegas
with Denise Scott Brown. When Robert Venturi accepted
the Pritzker Prize in 1991, he credited the career-shaping
influence of “the American Academy in Rome, where as a
Fellow within its community, headed by its easy and hospi-
table hosts, the director and his spouse, Laurance and Isabel
Roberts, and by means of its location, I might exist every day
in architectural heaven” (Figure 19).136
Venturi’s fellowship and Louis Kahn’s residency inserted
the postwar Academy securely into histories of twentieth-
century architecture. Venturi’s career, even more than Kahn’s,
would provide ex post facto validation for Roberts’s experi-
ment and inaugurate another new era at the Academy—one
in which its architectural relevance was more secure and a
journey to Rome was no longer viewed as a professional
detour, but rather as a pathway to success. Figure 19  Robert Venturi in Piazza Navona, Rome, ca. 1956 (photo by
In their thirteen years at the Academy the Robertses James A. Gresham; Architectural Archives, University of Pennsylvania,
defined its new tone, a contribution made obvious by how by the gift of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown).

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many members of the Academy community felt indebted to
them.137 They received an outpouring of tributes when
­Laurance announced his planned resignation in 1959. More
than two hundred letters, preserved in the archive of the
Robertses’ papers, expressed dismay and described Roberts’s
tenure in glowing terms: “Many of us came to the conclusion
that you were quite close to a perfect Director for the Ameri-
can Academy”; “It was your presence, seen and unseen, that
made the Academy such a great place to come back to”; and
“Only those who have known the Academy over the years
can quite appreciate what you have done, and how whole-
some and encouraging the change of climate was, intellectu-
ally speaking, which you brought about.”138 One lamented:
“I cannot visualize the Academy without you. I fear a Dark
Age will descend.”139 Robert Venturi wrote that it was “as if
the Piazza Navona itself were to disappear, and you know my
regard for that piazza.”140
One poignant tribute came from the Academy’s notori-
ously underpaid staff in Rome. They contributed funds to
have a gold medallion created, which they presented with a
statement describing their “gratitude and affection” and rec-
ognizing the Robertses’ “distinction and courtesy.”141 But the
Robertses also had critics, and not only among conservative
alumni. Their reign at the Villa Aurelia could be perceived
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Figure 20  View of Villa Aurelia from an
American Academy studio, ca. 1949
(photo by David L. Leavitt; David L.
Leavitt Collection, Architectural
Archives, University of Pennsylvania).
as one in which an exclusive court did not extend benefits
equally to all members of the Academy’s small, often frac-
tured community (Figure 20). The personal nature of this
affection and respect was also a clear institutional threat.
If loyalty belonged to the “Roberts Academy” rather than to
the Academy per se, what would follow the Robertses’ depar-
ture? Continuity demanded clarity about what, besides
Rome itself, could and should persist at the Academy.
One constant was the Academy’s intentionally elitist mis-
sion. The Rome Prize was established to help American
architects, artists, and scholars compete and win on a global
stage.142 After 1946 the cultural arena remained just as com-
petitive, but, as Yegül notes, professing faith in an eternal,
globally paramount tradition became untenable after the fall
of fascism.143 The Robertses’ “enlightened liberalism”
reflected the values of a cultivated U.S. midcentury intelli-
gentsia and differed substantially from the Gilded Age elit-
ism out of which the Academy was born. But it continued the
Academy’s basic mission, as one elite supplanted another.
The postwar Rome Prize, still a mechanism designed to cul-
tivate future U.S. artistic and intellectual leaders, remained
inextricable from the nation’s institutional apparatus of cul-
tural prestige and continued to privilege a northeastern,
Ivy League–based elite.144
“A T r u ly L i b e r a l O r i e n tat i o n ”    241
 Many of those same institutions actively redefined cul-
tural quality in more progressive terms. Such associations—
particularly with the GSD, Yale, and MIT—augmented by
Roberts’s pursuit of successful modernists, helped the post-
war Rome Prize retain architectural prestige when this might
have vanished entirely because of its Beaux-Arts heritage,
uncertain relevance to modernist artistic primacy, and the
limited productivity of many fellows. Roberts presciently
began aligning the Academy with the future direction of a
shifting American artistic trajectory in 1947, even as power-
ful decision makers in U.S. government and business
remained uncertain about modernism.145
The Roberts legacy includes goals toward which any truly
“liberal academy” might progress: engagement with a complex,
conflicted reality; pursuit of any promising idea; and support for
the conviction that when artists and thinkers confront a stimu-
lating, highly charged cultural context together, the process will
pay off for both. Roberts may have even influenced President
Smith’s stubborn “hope that if we can get the most exciting tal-
ent here, something will happen to them that will be all for the
best.”146 The Roberts era at the American Academy in Rome
was notable for the director’s relative autonomy in relation to
the New York administration, aided by his cooperative alliance
with President Smith. As the letters of farewell attest, Roberts
used his authority to empower each generation of artists and
scholars to make the best of the opportunities offered by their
time in Rome. “His” Academy was really their own.
Notes
1. I wish to gratefully acknowledge Patricia Morton, Fikret Yegül,
­Katherine Geffcken, and Charles Brickbauer, whose thoughtful sug-
gestions greatly improved this article. Lavinia Ciuffa and the American
Academy’s Photographic Archive, William Whitaker at the Architectural
Archives of the University of Pennsylvania, Ilaria Della Monica of the
­Biblioteca Berenson at the Villa I Tatti, and Mark Swope of the Swope
Trust provided invaluable research assistance and image permissions.
Finally, my heartfelt thanks to Craig Zabel and Brian Curran for their
helpful input on this project.
2. Fikret K. Yegül, Gentlemen of Instinct and Breeding: Architecture at the
American Academy in Rome, 1894–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1991).
3. Ibid., 119.
4. Report from Board of Trustees meeting, 24 Apr. 1945, Reel 5760: 15,
American Academy in Rome Records, Archives of American Art, Smith-
sonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (hereafter AAR Records, AAA).
Classicist and trustee William Dinsmoor officially held this position from
July 1944 to June 1945, but the State Department did not permit him to
go to Rome during World War II. Lucia Valentine and Alan Valentine,
The American Academy in Rome, 1894–1969 (Charlottesville: University of
­Virginia Press, 1973), 104–6.
5. Morey (1877–1955) held his State Department position until 1950; his
duties included helping to negotiate the return of works of art and research
libraries displaced by the war.
6. On the Academy’s wartime history, see Valentine and Valentine,
American Academy. While the Academy’s facilities had been spared major
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damage, reopening was still a daunting task: “When they arrived in Rome
in December 1946, the Robertses found the Academy building barely
­habitable, with a portiere and cook but without heat, hot water, or usable
furnishings, and with a U.S. Army mess in residence. The Villa Aurelia was
near-derelict.” Charles Brickbauer, tribute in event program, “A Celebra-
tion of the Year of the Humanities: Art History, Classics, History and Lit-
erature,” 12 Oct. 1992, AAR Correspondence 1990–93, “The Year of the
Humanities,” Laurance and Isabel Roberts Papers 1910–2005, Biblioteca
Berenson, Villa I Tatti: The Harvard University Center for Renaissance
Studies, Florence (hereafter Roberts Papers, Biblioteca Berenson).
7. Morey had also been a fellow from 1900 to 1903 at the School of Classi-
cal Studies, which joined the Academy in 1913 (see note 12).
8. See Yegül’s account of this incident in Gentlemen of Instinct and Breeding,
82–84.
9. Henri Marceau to James K. Smith, 24 Sept. 1937, Reel 5758: 1196–
1202, AAR Records, AAA. When the two met in 1935 to discuss Marceau’s
possibly taking the position of assistant director in Rome, they also dis-
cussed artistic reforms at the Academy.
10. The recommendations read as follows: “(1) Admission of married men
to the fellowships provided the wife is not dependent upon her husband’s
stipend for support, thereby depriving him of money intended for his edu-
cation. (2) Admission of women to the scholarships. Married women to be
admitted under the same conditions as married men. (3) American artists
in Residence. European artists to be invited for short periods. (4) Length
of Fellowship two years with a possible third. (5) Selection for director of
a young energetic layman with an understanding of scholarship and the
fine arts, who by air-transportation can divide his time between Rome and
America and direct our activities in both countries.” “Report of the Com-
mittee on School of Fine Arts,” 8 Nov. 1945, Reel 5752: 987–88, AAR
Records, AAA.
11. Ibid.
12. On the early history of the American Academy, see Valentine and
­ alentine, American Academy; Yegül, Gentlemen of Instinct and Breeding;
V
Mary N. Woods, “Charles Follen McKim and the Foundation of the
American Academy in Rome,” in Light on the Eternal City: Observations and
Discoveries in the Art and Architecture of Rome, ed. Hellmut Hager and Susan
Scott Munshower (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press,
1987).
13. Valentine and Valentine, American Academy, 61–62.
14. One architect-director from 1917 to 1932, Gorham P. Stevens, com-
bined competencies. He was also a highly informed classical scholar and
led the American School of Classical Studies in Athens from 1939 to 1947.
15. Lawrence Richardson notes how actively the Robertses participated in
“the life of Rome, art exhibits, concerts, receptions, dinner parties, and the
theater… . The Roberts always seemed to be abreast of the life of the city
and the rest of Italy. If there were a notable exhibit in Florence or Venice,
the Roberts would be sure to see it.” Lawrence Richardson Jr., The Ameri-
can Academy 1947–54, Reopening and Reorientation: A Personal Reminiscence
(Rome: American Academy in Rome, 2012), 68.
16. Roberts claimed that he and Smith never discussed the Academy dur-
ing their war service together. Jewell Fenzi, “An Interview with Laurance
and Isabel Roberts, 1995,” 7, Roberts Papers, Biblioteca Berenson.
17. Valentine and Valentine, American Academy, 108. Approval for a second
fellowship year was not uncommon, and arts fellows with outside support,
such as Fulbright or other fellowships, could stay as long as three years.
On foreign artists at the Academy, see note 62 below.
18. After the first year, families with children were housed outside the col-
legial Main Building.
19. The first female fellow at the ASCSR was Mabel Douglas Reid of
1901, and other women came earlier as students. America’s most renowned
classicists include many women who participated in the ASCSR and the
Academy: Esther B. Van Deman (student of the ASCSR 1901, Fellow of
the ASCSR 1909), Lily Ross Taylor (student of the ASCSR 1909, ­Fellow
of the American Academy in Rome [FAAR] 1918), Marion Elizabeth Blake
(FAAR 1925), and Inez Scott Ryberg (FAAR 1926) are only a few. See
Katherine Geffcken’s contributions to Karen Einaudi, ed., Esther B. Van
Deman: Images from the Archive of an American Archaeologist in Italy at the
Turn of the Century (Rome: American Academy in Rome, 1991).
20. Valentine and Valentine, American Academy, 66. Director Carter asked
the trustees for more equitable space provisions and fine arts fellowships
for women but was refused. On gender issues at the ASCSR and the early
Academy, see Yegül, Gentlemen of Instinct and Breeding, 17–21.
21. Alumni were welcome to reside at the Academy if accommodations
were available, but restricted space meant this was almost never the case for
women, while their male counterparts were seldom turned away. “Report
of the Committee on the Welfare of Women Students at the American
School of Classical Studies in Rome,” Dec. 1939, Reel 5752: 880, AAR
Records, AAA. This report suggested several ways to improve the situ-
ation, but it was not submitted until just before the Academy’s wartime
closure.
22. The women’s dining room, described as a “dark, unattractive room on
the court,” now houses the Academy’s bar. Yegül, Gentlemen of Instinct and
Breeding, 234n8.
23. Valentine and Valentine, American Academy, 108. The first woman
to receive an arts fellowship was sculptor Concetta Scaravaglione (FAAR
1947). Those in other fields were architect Astra Zarina (FAAR 1960),
painter Marjorie Kreilick (FAAR 1963), composer Barbara Ann Kolb
(FAAR 1971), and landscape architect Joanna Dougherty (FAAR 1986).
The first woman appointed to the Academy Board of Trustees was Phyllis
W. G. Gordan in 1971.
24. J. K. Smith, “To the Advisory Council and friends of AAR,” report,
28 Jan. 1946, Reel 5759: 212–15, AAR Records, AAA.
25. Meriwether Stuart to L. Roberts, 14 June 1946, Reel 5787: 1577, AAR
Records, AAA.
26. Francis Henry Taylor wrote to the trustees: “At the end of the War
there were many thoughtful persons who questioned whether or not the
Academy should be revived except as a research institute for archaeology
and the history of art.” F. H. Taylor to Trustees of the American Academy
in Rome, n.d. (copy to I. Roberts, 18 May 1957), AAR Correspondence
1956–64, Roberts Papers, Biblioteca Berenson.
27. The art history fellowship, first awarded in 1947, had been proposed
by  Chester Aldrich in the 1930s. Valentine and Valentine, American
­Academy, 114. Medieval art historians like Morey came under the aegis of
classical studies before the war, but after the war postclassical researchers
were part of the School of Fine Arts.
28. Among the Academy’s fine arts disciplines, musical composition—an
artistic field in which work was least subject to Rome-based stylistic or
historic limits—had remained consistently successful. “If a list were to be
composed of the compositions played for the first time by American sym-
phony orchestras in the last ten years, it is a modest guess that at least 75%
of the composers would be found to have been guests of the Academy at
some time.” Agnes Mongan and twenty-two cosigners to Board of Trus-
tees, 17 Dec. 1959, Correspondence 1959 Re: Resignation from AAR (here-
after Resignation Correspondence), Roberts Papers, Biblioteca Berenson
(uncredited quote in Valentine and Valentine, American Academy, 118).
29. Composer Ulysses Kay won the Rome Prize in 1949 and a Fulbright
grant in 1950; he resided at the Academy from 1949 to 1952. Sculptor
John Rhoden first came to the Academy in 1951 as a Fulbright scholar
and remained as a Rome Prize fellow from 1952 to 1954. Classicist Philip
Wooby came under a Rome Prize from 1952 to 1954. Roberts men-
tioned Rhoden’s and Wooby’s race in letters to Smith, 6 and 16 Feb. 1951,
Reel  5759: 994–96, AAR Records, AAA. Novelist Ralph Ellison would
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come as a fellow in literature in 1957. On anti-Semitism at the early Acad-
emy, see Yegül, Gentlemen of Instinct and Breeding, 33–34.
30. According to Spero Daltas (FAAR 1949), a design competition was
again used in 1949; the competition was won by Daltas and Dale Claude
Byrd (FAAR 1949). Spero Daltas, personal communication with author,
24 April and 1 and 5 May 2007. David Leavitt’s (FAAR 1950–51) unsuc-
cessful competition entry is held with his papers at the Architectural
Archives of the University of Pennsylvania. Finalists were still invited to
New York for interviews, a practice that continues to this day.
31. The Robertses personally covered the additional costs of events that
exceeded the official budget and purchased many furnishings for the Villa
Aurelia after the war, many of which stayed behind when they left. See
L.  Roberts to Michael Rapuano, 15 Apr. 1959, AAR Correspondence
1956–64, Roberts Papers, Biblioteca Berenson. Isabel Roberts’s detailed
records of events, including seating charts for meals, show her efforts to
ensure that guests at smaller events sat near those with whom conversation
would be enjoyable and profitable.
32. Arthur Deam to J. K. Smith, 1 Apr. 1947, Reel 5758: 1155, AAR
Records, AAA. World War II fellowships supported domestic study.
­Benjamin G. Kohl, Wayne A. Linker, and Buff Suzanne Kavelman, eds.,
The Centennial Directory of the American Academy in Rome (New York:
American Academy in Rome, 1995), 371.
33. J. K. Smith to A. Deam, 2 Apr. 1947, Reel 5758: 1156, AAR Records, AAA.
34. Thirty Rome Prizes in architecture were awarded from 1894 through
1940 (plus one erased by damnatio memoriae). Kohl et al., Centennial
­Directory; Yegül, Gentlemen of Instinct and Breeding.
35. “American Academy in Rome,” Landscape Architecture 36 ( July 1946),
159–60; and the similar (but not identical) “The American Academy in
Rome,” Journal of the American Institute of Architects, Aug. 1946, 74–75.
36. In mid-April, Howe wrote, “I am sorry to hear the [Rome Prize] ­judgment
has been postponed, but if there are as yet an insufficient number of submis-
sions, it is probably as well.” George Howe to Laurance ­Roberts, 16 Apr. 1947,
George Howe Collection, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Depart-
ment of Drawings and Archives, Columbia University, New York (hereafter
Howe Collection, Avery Archives). Howe advised architect James Lamantia to
apply for a fellowship that first year, although he did not receive one until the
following year. James Lamantia, interview by author, 24 May 2006.
37. Olindo Grossi to trustee Eric Gugler, 8 Jan. 1945, cited by Yegül,
­Gentlemen of Instinct and Breeding, 120.
38. The medieval era had been considered unsuitable for artistic emu-
lation, and the baroque was a forbidden style before the war. See Yegül,
­Gentlemen of Instinct and Breeding , 57–60.
39. Frank E. Brown of Yale was professor in charge of the Classical School
from 1947 to 1952, during which time he supervised the archaeologi-
cal excavations at Cosa in central Italy, succeeded by Lily Ross Taylor
(1952–55), Mason Hammond (1955–57), and Herbert Bloch (1957–79).
Kohl et al., Centennial Directory, 385. The precise numbers of pre- and
postdoctoral fellows in classical studies could vary from year to year, but
the intent to support scholars at different points in their careers was con-
sistent. I thank Katherine Geffcken (FAAR classical studies 1955) for her
clarification on this point.
40. Taylor to Trustees of the American Academy in Rome, n.d. (copy to
I. Roberts, 18 May 1957).
41. Mongan and twenty-two cosigners to Board of Trustees, 17 Dec. 1959.
42. Sylvia Wright, “Rome’s Most Favored Tourists,” Reporter, 12 July
1956, 41.
43. Yegül describes the Academy’s most ardent interwar advocates as
“priests of a mystery cult whose high altar lay in front of the Villa Aurelia.”
Yegül, Gentlemen of Instinct and Breeding, 31.
44. Ian Lowe, “Obituary: Laurance Roberts,” Independent (London),
15 Mar. 2002.
“A T r u ly L i b e r a l O r i e n tat i o n ”    243
45. Le Corbusier, Vers une architecture (Paris: Crès, 1923).
46. This visit took place on 14 February 1947. L. Roberts to J. Hudnut,
5 Feb. 1947, Reel 5798: 1389; and J. Hudnut to L. Roberts, 6 Feb. 1947,
Reel 5798: 1395, AAR Records, AAA.
47. The GSD graduates who received the fellowships were Frederic
Coolidge and Charles Wiley, 1947; James Lamantia, 1948; and Dale Byrd,
1949. Kohl et al., Centennial Directory.
48. In addition to earning one-third of all prewar Rome Prize fellowships
in architecture, Columbia students accounted for another thirteen who
went to the Academy on McKim scholarships from 1911 through 1927.
Ibid., 373. The McKim scholarship continues at Columbia as a travel
award.
49. Seven other architecture fellowships were awarded during this period,
with two going to graduates of Cornell and one each to graduates of the
Pratt Institute, the University of Oklahoma, Cranbrook Academy of Art,
the University of Illinois, and North Carolina State University. Denise R.
Costanzo, “The Lessons of Rome: Architects at the American Academy,
1947–66” (PhD diss., Pennsylvania State University, 2009).
50. Denise R. Costanzo, “Architectural Amnesia: George Howe, Mario
De Renzi, and the U.S. Consulate in Naples,” Memoirs of the American
Academy in Rome 56/57 (2011/2012), 353–89.
51. Frederic Coolidge to Mary T. Williams, 28 May 1947, Fellows Files:
Coolidge, Frederic S., 1947–1948, American Academy in Rome Archives,
New York. Roberts could influence Rome Prize awards only indirectly,
through appointments to the selection jury, but these could strongly shape
the jury’s leanings.
52. The other fine arts fields were landscape architecture, painting,
sculpture, and musical composition. Arts fellowships in literature began
in 1950–51, administered by the National Academy of Letters. Valentine
and Valentine, American Academy, 114. Before World War II, art historians
came to the Academy within the School of Classical Studies, whose defini-
tion could be stretched to include the early medieval era.
53. The first nonarchitect to become president was landscape architect
Michael Rapuano, a trustee from 1947 to 1974, who served as president
from 1958 to 1969. Kohl et al., Centennial Directory. For fifty-eight of
the Academy’s first sixty-four years its president also led McKim, Mead
and  White: Charles F. McKim, 1894–1909; William Rutherford Mead,
1910–28; James K. Smith, 1938–58. Yegül calls the Academy an “extension”
of this firm. Yegül, Gentlemen of Instinct and Breeding, 118–19.
54. The other board members were businessmen, lawyers, and other
professionals. There were a handful of art historians and arts administra-
tors as well, whose interests could lie with either “half ” of the Academy.
I determined the board’s makeup in 1947 using information in Kohl et al.,
Centennial Directory.
55. As an art history student at Vassar, Isabel Roberts specialized in archi-
tecture, so her husband’s efforts may have reflected her own continuing
interest in the discipline. Fenzi, “Interview with Laurance and Isabel Rob-
erts,” 57.
56. Laurance Roberts to George Howe, 4 Mar. 1947, Howe Collection,
Avery Archives.
57. Laurance Roberts to George Howe, 17 Mar. 1947, Howe Collection,
Avery Archives.
58. The exhibition catalog was Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Philip ­Johnson,
and Alfred H. Barr Jr., Modern Architecture: International ­E xhibition
(New  York: Museum of Modern Art, 1932); see also Hitchcock and
­J ohnson’s The International Style: Architecture since 1922 (New York:
W. W. Norton, 1932). On Howe’s career, see Robert A. M. Stern, George
Howe: Toward a Modern American Architecture (New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 1975).
59. During the war he occupied the federal government’s highest architec-
tural post, which “established Howe as a leading spokesman for American
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architecture and a leading force in the reconciliation between the seem-
ingly conflicting beliefs of modernist architects, still in the minority, and
the profession at large.” Howe began as a consultant to the Public Build-
ings Administration in Washington, D.C., in 1941 and was appointed to
the Federal Works Agency in 1942. Stern, George Howe, 198–208.
60. This was also a point Howe had in common with Roberts. Howe’s
mother came from a prominent Philadelphia family and was born and
edu­­cated in France; Howe was educated in Switzerland and at Groton. Ibid., 3.
Bruno  Zevi often described Howe as “aristocratic.” See Bruno Zevi,
“George Howe,” Metron 25 (1948), 10–11; and his obituary, Bruno Zevi,
“George Howe: An Aristocratic Architect,” Journal of the American Institute
of Architects, Oct. 1955, 176–79. For the Johnson quote, see Philip ­Johnson,
The Philip Johnson Tapes: Interviews by Robert A. M. Stern (New  York:
Monacelli Press, 2008), 47.
61. The architects on the board in 1947 were Everett V. Meeks (dean at
Yale 1922–47), William Platt, Eric Gugler (White House architect during
the 1930s–40s), George S. Koyl (dean at the University of Pennsylvania,
who continued its Beaux-Arts methodology until 1950), Henry R. Shepley
(1887–1962, partner in the Boston firm of Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson
& Abbot, and successor to H. H. Richardson’s practice), and J. K. Smith.
62. The Fine Arts Committee’s 1945 request to include European artists
in residence was not granted until architects Wallace Harrison and Max
Abramovitz “established a fund to relieve the Academy of the expense for
the foreign artists-in-residence” around 1960. Valentine and Valentine,
American Academy, 110–11.
63. Howe was supervising architect for the Public Buildings Administra-
tion from February 1942 to 14 September 1945. See Stern, George Howe,
198, 209, 251.
64. In a Rome Prize announcement in the April 1948 Journal of the Ameri-
can Institute of Architects, the Academy mentioned that “George Howe, who
left for Rome on March sixteenth” was on his way (158). Howe’s residency
was delayed six months because of complications in reconciling it with the
St. Louis competition schedule.
65. L. Roberts to J. K. Smith, 7 June 1948, Reel 5759: 938–39, AAR
Records, AAA.
66. On Howe’s residency and this project, see Costanzo, “Architectural
Amnesia.” Lawrence Richardson identifies John Bayley as Howe’s assistant
on this project. See Richardson, American Academy, 57.
67. Neil Levine, “Architecture between Need and Desire: Louis Kahn,
Rome, the Ruin, and the Unfinished” (paper delivered at the conference
“Rome as a Generating Image of American Architecture,” American Acad-
emy in Rome, Jan. 1996), 1; a copy of this essay is held in the Ameri-
can Academy of Rome Archives, New York. This effect would have been
strongest once Kahn’s reputation began its ascent in the late 1950s and
early 1960s, when the Academy’s postwar reputation had already solidified.
68. Johnson wrote: “George [Howe] says that you might like to go to Rome
next winter… . I feel quite sure that this could be arranged and would be
delighted to recommend you. It rather looks as if I would be in Rome
some time next winter and we could have fun.” Philip Johnson to Louis
I. Kahn, 27 Mar. 1947, Louis I. Kahn Collection (hereafter Kahn Col-
lection), University of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Historical Museum
Commission (hereafter AAUP). Howe wrote to Kahn twice in the next two
weeks encouraging Kahn to persist and, like Johnson, claiming he could
guarantee the results: “I do think we can have fun together in Rome and as
I am a member of the Jury of Selection, I ought to be able to cook up this
dish to our mutual satisfaction.” George Howe to Louis Kahn, 31 Mar. and
10 Apr. 1947, Kahn Collection, AAUP.
69. Michael Rapuano to Louis Kahn, 28 May 1947, Kahn Collection,
AAUP. According to Howe, architect and trustee Charles Platt (“whom I
don’t particularly like”) blocked Kahn’s application. G. Howe to L. Kahn,
10 June 1947, Kahn Collection, AAUP.
70. Scaravaglione had taught at Sarah Lawrence, Black Mountain, and
other colleges since 1925, and her work was widely published in arts
­journals in the 1930s and 1940s. By 1947 Kahn had built only a few minor
projects, and he did not begin to teach at Yale until the fall of that year.
Kahn’s professional visibility was due primarily to his published essays
on housing, urban planning, and “monumentality,” his leadership of the
American Society of Architects and Planners, and his association with
the more famous Howe. See the bibliography of Kahn’s published writ-
ings by David B. Brownlee, Shilpa Mehta, and Peter S. Reed in David B.
Brownlee and David G. De Long, Louis I. Kahn: In the Realm of Architecture
(New York: Rizzoli, 1991), 433–39.
71. “First Woman Wins Prix de Rome,” Art News 46 ( June 1947), 60;
“Rome Fellowships,” Art Digest 22 (15 Apr. 1948), 13; “Rome Fellowships,
1947,” College Art Journal 7, no. 1 (Autumn 1947), 60; “Rome Fellowship,”
Architectural Record 102 (Aug. 1947), 128.
72. Rapuano to Kahn, 28 May 1947.
73. Louis Kahn to George Howe, 13 June 1947, Kahn Collection, AAUP.
74. George Howe to Louis Kahn, 18 June 1947; and George Howe to
Laurance Roberts, 18 June 1947, Kahn Collection, AAUP.
75. Mary T. Williams to Louis Kahn, 1 Dec. 1949, Kahn Collection,
AAUP. A Fulbright provided from $3,500 to $6,000 in support (“depend-
ing on the number of one’s dependents, length of time spent in Italy, etc.”)
plus passage by ocean liner.
76. On external fellowships and postwar finances, see Valentine and Valen-
tine, American Academy, 112–16.
77. By 1951–52, the number dropped to 9 of 145, with far fewer thereaf-
ter. Archives of the U.S.-Italy Fulbright Commission, Rome. The Acad-
emy actively supported the Fulbright Bill and worked to ensure it could
be a host institution for U.S. scholars abroad. See J. K. Smith to Senator
­Fulbright, 25 June 1946, and Fulbright to Smith, 27 June 1946, Reel 5759:
516–17; L. Roberts to R. Morey, 18 Dec. 1947, Reel 5798: 1466–67; and
L. Roberts to IIE, 16 Jan. 1948, Reel 5798: 1468–69, AAR Records, AAA.
78. M. Williams to L. Kahn, 4 Jan. 1950, Kahn Collection, AAUP.
79. Kahn had a reservation on the Saturnalia for 21 September, which
he later canceled. L. Kahn to M. Williams, 19 Apr. 1950; M. Williams to
L. Kahn, 30 Mar. and 21 Nov. 1950, Kahn Collection, AAUP. The receipt
for Kahn’s TWA flight to Rome departing on 30 November is held in the
Kahn Collection, AAUP. Kahn wrote a letter to the Academy fellows from
“on board ship” on 1 March 1951. A letter of 21 February 1951 from his
partner Kenneth Day states that Kahn was scheduled to sail on the SS Isle
de France from Le Havre on 27 February 1951. Kahn Collection, AAUP.
80. Laurance Roberts to Louis Kahn, 31 July 1951, Kahn Collection,
AAUP.
81. American Academy in Rome Annual Report, 1950–51, American Academy
in Rome Archives, New York.
82. Woodbridge later served as Columbia University’s consulting archi-
tect, on New York’s Art Commission, and on the New York Landmarks
Commission; see obituary in New York Times, 18 Jan. 1974. He published
his only essay, “Beauty and the Urban Beast,” Journal of the Royal Archi-
tectural Institute of Canada 30 ( July 1953), 206–7, the year after his return
from Rome.
83. Labatut, director of Princeton’s program from 1928 to 1967, won a
second-place Prix de Rome in 1926. But Le Corbusier invited him to lead
CIAM in the late 1930s, and he received invitations from Eero Saarinen
and Edward Durrell Stone to design light and water displays for promi-
nent projects, all of which he declined. See Costanzo, “Lessons of Rome,”
75–77.
84. Belluschi was recommended by Michael Rapuano. L. Roberts to
J. K. Smith, 20 Feb. 1953, Reel 5759: 1048, AAR Records, AAA. He was
appointed by President Truman to the National Commission of Fine
Arts in 1950, the first of many powerful boards on which he would serve.
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Meredith Clausen, Pietro Belluschi: Modern American Architect (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 1994), viii.
85. The American Academy in Rome, Fine Arts and Classical Studies: Rome
Prize Fellowships, 1954–1955, brochure, Kahn Collection, AAUP.
86. Paul [Manship] to J. K. Smith, 1 Sept. 1950, Reel 5760: 138, AAR
Records, AAA.
87. J. K. Smith to Paul Manship, 7 Sept. 1950, Reel 5760: 141–42, AAR
Records, AAA.
88. Ibid.
89. Cain would succeed Smith as president of the firm, whose final incar-
nation was Walker Cain and Associates.
90. L. Roberts to J. K. Smith, 17 Dec. 1951, Reel 5759: 305, AAR Records,
AAA.
91. J. K. Smith to L. Roberts, 21 Dec. 1951, Reel 5759: 310, AAR Records,
AAA. Wallace K. Harrison would be appointed to the Academy’s Board of
Trustees in 1959.
92. Smith was Cain’s boss at McKim, Mead and White, but he tried to
remain objective: “It was particularly important to me to try to discount
my obvious interest in the man.” Ibid.
93. J. K. Smith to L. Roberts, 30 Mar. 1953, Reel 5759: 1053, AAR
Records, AAA.
94. The firm would receive American Institute of Architects (AIA) Honor
Awards in 1960, 1967, and 1976 and a Progressive ­Architecture Award
in 1962. The earliest national article on their work is Walter McQuade,
“Atlanta’s Arabian Market Place: Lenox Square Regional Shopping Center,”
Architectural Forum 111 (Oct. 1959), 120–27. See also “The 1960 Honor
Awards,” American Institute of Architects Journal 33 (Apr. 1960), 93; “P/A
Ninth Annual Design Awards,” Progressive Architecture 43 ( Jan.  1962),
112–71; “A Stage Is Set for Art,” Architectural Forum 116 (Feb.  1962),
58–61.
95. L. Roberts to J. K. Smith, 8 Apr. 1953, Reel 5759: 1054, AAR Records,
AAA.
96. Smith and Roberts had known each other since the war, when both
worked together in Military Intelligence (see note 16 above), and were
close enough to vacation together with their families.
97. J. K. Smith to L. Roberts, 15 Apr. 1953, Reel 5759: 1056, AAR
Records, AAA.
98. Isabel Roberts’s diary entry for 15 April 1953 reads: “A letter from JK
to Laurance which was like a body blow: he speaks of growing opposi-
tion from a group of Trustees who believe that L. has ‘been unsympa-
thetic,’ if not actually antagonistic, to certain artistic philosophies repre-
sented by these Trustees. We could name them all: Waugh, Gugler, Platt,
Faulkner—I am sure. But it is a letter which Jim should never have written:
only one step above an anonymous one and a letter no gentleman would
have written.” Roberts Papers, Biblioteca Berenson.
99. In 1995, Roberts recalled that an Italian magazine at the time featured
a lace-edged U.S. flag on its cover. Fenzi, “Interview with Laurance and
Isabel Roberts,” 42.
100. L. Roberts to J. K. Smith, 22 Apr. 1953, Reel 5759: 1057, AAR
Records, AAA.
101. Roberts described the sculpture jury (under Manship) as the least open
to modern artists. If funds allowed, he pushed to add a second, more progres-
sive sculptor. Fenzi, “Interview with Laurance and Isabel Roberts,” 46–47.
102. J. K. Smith to L. Roberts, 5 May 1953, Reel 5759: 1058–59, AAR
Records, AAA.
103. Smith noted apologetically in his reply how “distressed” he was by the
tone of his 15 April letter. He wrote it after returning to work after a long
illness to find these conflicts on his desk. Ibid.
104. Smith knew Belluschi would come in the spring, and that Oenslager’s
stay was planned for that same period, while Toombs “was more interested
in the first half ” of the year. Ibid.
“A T r u ly L i b e r a l O r i e n tat i o n ”    245
105. P. Manship, M. Rapuano, W. Hancock, E. Gugler, D. Moore,
S.  Waugh, B. Faulkner, D. Keller, and W. Platt to J. K. Smith, 29 May
1953, Reel 5758: 1182–83. The letter was forwarded to Roberts in July. M.
Rapuano to L. Roberts, 7 July 1953, Reel 5759: 1067. The recommenda-
tions were as follows: “(1) That juries be chosen with a view to their expe-
rience in monumental and collaborative work. (2) That the maximum age
limit be set at 30 years. (3) That the collaborative problem be reinstituted.
(4) That Fellowships in Painting and Sculpture be granted for a period
of two years, with the option of an extension to a third year. (5) That the
competitions in Painting and Sculpture be announced as ‘Competition in
Mural Painting’ and ‘Competition in Monumental Sculpture.’ (6)  That
certain minimum requirements of work other than the collaborative prob-
lem be established for Fellows in Painting and Sculpture.” Items 4, 5, and
6 concerned painters and sculptors more than architects, but the first three
would have affected architecture directly, and all would have altered the
Academy’s artistic culture. The archive includes a summary of a “Rump
Session” held 9 April 1953 attended by Hancock, Manship, Platt, Waugh,
Gugler, and Rapuano, who met to “review the trend of Painting and Sculp-
ture at the Academy since 1947,” Reel 5758: 1181. This group requested
“that a Professor of Fine Arts, to have the same status as a Professor of
Classical Studies, be appointed.” The group of authors was character-
ized as “nine friends” in the January 1954 response, Reel 5759: 351, AAR
Records, AAA.
106. Manship et al. to Smith, 29 May 1953.
107. The committee called it “ideal” if Rome Prize jury members had
experience in “monumental and collaborative work” but affirmed that they
simply assessed applicants’ potential to benefit from Rome. Reinstatement
of the age limit of thirty was deemed too rigid, but the committee agreed
to try to keep the fellows “as young as possible.” The request to reinstitute
the required collaborative problem was met with a promise to “encour-
age and foster” collaborative work without reinstating required projects.
Asked to rename painting and sculpture fellowships “Mural Painting” and
“Monumental Sculpture,” the committee declared that Rome encouraged
these media, but the awards should have no such limits. To the request
that painting and sculpture fellows fulfill minimum work requirements, the
committee agreed this might be “desirable in certain cases.” M. Rapuano
to J. K. Smith, 22 Jan. 1954, Reel 5759: 351, AAR Records, AAA.
108. Ibid.
109. Roberts later said that had the policy reversals been enacted, both
he and Smith would have resigned. He claimed the committee’s letter was
actually drafted by composer Randall Thompson (a fellow of the Academy
in 1925 and a resident in 1952), “but it was rather tense.” Fenzi, “Interview
with Laurance and Isabel Roberts,” 48.
110. R. Venturi to Vanna and R. Venturi, 26 Feb. 1955; and Venturi to
James K. Smith, 14 Oct. 1956, “Rome: notes: letters,” VSB Collection,
AAUP. On the influence of Rogers and other Italian architects on Venturi,
see Martino Stierli, “In the Academy’s Garden: Robert Venturi, the Grand
Tour, and the Revision of Modern Architecture,” AA Files 56  (2008),
41–62.
111. C. Brickbauer to L. Roberts, 9 Jan. 1956, Fellows Files: Brickbauer,
Charles G., 1955–57; and D. Stewart to L. Roberts, 18 Jan. 1956, Fellows
Files: Stewart, Dan R., 1955–57, American Academy in Rome Archives,
New York.
112. “The Fellows in architecture have asked me about the possibility of
having some Italian architect, say Ernesto Rogers of Milan, direct them
for a month during the winter in a collaborative problem. This, frankly, is
exactly what I have been hoping would happen, and I would strongly sup-
port them in this general idea as well as the choice of Rogers.” L. Roberts
to J. K. Smith, 2 Nov. 1954, Reel 5759: 1091, AAR Records, AAA.
113. L. Roberts to J. K. Smith, 28 Dec. 1954, Reel 5759: 1102, AAR
Records, AAA.
246    j s a h   |   7 4 . 2   |   J u n e 2 0 1 5
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114. American Academy in Rome Annual Report, 1954–55, 27–28, American
Academy in Rome Archives, New York. Venturi’s project has been dis-
cussed only as an individual work, not as a collaborative one.
115. Robert Venturi to Lou [Louis I. Kahn], 28 Mar. 1956, “Rome: notes:
letters,” VSB Collection, AAUP. This typescript appears to be a draft of
a letter, with handwritten notes in the margins. The phrase “after Eero’s
last minit notice that he would not come” has been crossed out by hand.
116. Robert Venturi to Robert and Vanna Venturi, 22 Jan. 1956, “Rome:
notes: letters,” VSB Collection, AAUP. This differs from Venturi’s later
recollections. In 2007 he stated, “I know nothing about Eero Saarinen’s
planned Academy residency of 1956.” Robert Venturi to author, 30 Mar.
2007. Kahn served on Venturi’s 1950 master’s thesis jury, and Venturi
worked for him immediately prior to his 1954 fellowship. He also refused
multiple job offers while at the Academy, holding out for the chance to
work for Kahn again upon his return from Rome, which he did for seven
months. Dianne L. Minnite, “Chronology,” in David B. Brownlee, David
G. De Long, and Kathryn B. Hiesinger, Out of the Ordinary: Robert Venturi,
Denise Scott Brown and Associates: Architecture, Urbanism, Design (Philadel-
phia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2001), 247.
117. L. Roberts to J. K. Smith, 24 Oct. 1951, Reel 5759: 1016, AAR
Records, AAA. Roberts mentioned that Saarinen accompanied Wood-
bridge and the fellows on visits to the nearby villas Lante and Caprar-
ola. His account suggests a clear contrast between the architects’ reac-
tions to Woodbridge and the far more famous, exciting, and stimulating
Saarinen.
118. J. K. Smith to L. Roberts, 20 Nov. 1951, Reel 5759: 299, AAR
Records, AAA. Three months later, Saarinen was officially listed on the
slate of potential future residents: “The Fine Arts Committee approved
adding Eero Saarinen, [and] Pietro Belluschi (this was Mr. Rapuano’s
­suggestion and meets with my approval) … to the respective panels.”
L. Roberts to J. K. Smith, 20 Feb. 1952, Reel 5759: 1022, AAR Records, AAA.
119. Warren [Platner] to Eero Saarinen, 16 Jan. 1956, Eero Saarinen
­Collection, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, New
Haven, Conn.
120. “Maturing Modern,” Time, 2 July 1956.
121. “Our itinerary has to remain flexible because Aline’s purpose in going
to Florence is to see 81-year old Art Critic Bernard Behrenson [sic], and he
may decide to go to Rome or Venice or Tarmina [sic]—in London we will
know and wire you word.” Saarinen to Warren [Platner], 22 May 1956,
Eero Saarinen Collection, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University
Library, New Haven, Conn.
122. L. Roberts to J. K. Smith, 25 Oct. 1956, Reel 5759: 1154, AAR
Records, AAA.
123. Mumford was a visitor to the Academy during 1964–68. Kohl
et al., Centennial Directory. According to the Academy’s annual report for
1966–67, he led an Academy seminar in late May 1967, a visit concur-
rent with his receipt of an honorary degree at the University of Rome.
American Academy in Rome Annual Report, 1966–67, American Academy in
Rome Archives, New York. While in Rome in 1957, Mumford and his
wife stayed at the top of the Spanish Steps and visited architect Bruno
Zevi. See Donald Miller, Lewis Mumford: A Life (Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1992), 459–60.
124. For Labatut, the Academy may have been a subsidized gateway to
Europe; he included visits to his native France during his four residencies.
Belluschi visited Rome annually after 1951 to visit his mother; for him, the
invitation’s main value was probably as an opportunity to cultivate profes-
sional connections. He described the American East Coast architectural
establishment as the profession’s “mafia” and may have valued access to
the Academy’s network of artists, universities, and cultural, business, and
governmental agencies. Pietro Belluschi, interview by Meredith Clausen,
22 and 23 Aug. and 4 Sept. 1983, Oral History Interviews, Archives of
American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Clausen, Pietro
Belluschi, 210.
125. The letter in Venturi’s archive is an unsent draft, with no correspond-
ing version in Kahn’s papers. It is unlikely Roberts would have openly dis-
cussed this possibility with the fellows had Kahn not confirmed his avail-
ability by phone.
126. Kahn’s papers include letters from 1959, 1960, 1963, 1964, and
1965 asking him to invite “any outstanding young architects in your
office” to apply for the Rome Prize. Kahn served on the Rome Prize
juries for 1952 and 1959 and was invited to do so again in 1964. See
the list of architecture juries from 1957 to 1974 held by the American
Academy in Rome Archives, New York, as well as Mary T. Williams
to Kahn, 7 Jan. 1952, 19 Dec. 1958, 12 Mar. 1959, and 7 Jan. 1964;
and Louis Kahn to Mary T. Williams, 21 Jan. 1952, Kahn Collection,
AAUP. Kahn stayed frequently at the Academy while traveling to and
from South Asia, calling it “my inn in Rome.” L. Kahn to R. Kimball,
15 Aug. 1963 and 1 Sept. 1961; and R. Kimball to L. Kahn, 21 Jan. 1965,
Kahn Collection, AAUP.
127. Francis Adams Comstock, A Gothic Vision: F. L. Griggs and His Work
(Oxford: Boston Public Library and Ashmolean Museum, 1966). F. L.
Griggs’s (1876–1938) etchings depicted British medieval buildings and
towns. Comstock had visited the Academy briefly in 1954 and apparently
recommended Rogers to Roberts. L. Roberts to J. K. Smith, 29 Nov. 1954,
Reel 5759: 1096, AAR Records, AAA.
128. Nathaniel Owings, The Spaces in Between: An Architect’s Journey
­(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973), 145–46.
129. By this time, Smith was sixty-five years old and in poor health.
He died only three years later, in 1961. He continued to correspond with
Roberts until his death.
130. Taylor to Trustees of the American Academy in Rome, n.d. (copy to
I. Roberts, 18 May 1957).
131. Isabel Roberts, diary entry, 1 Aug. 1953, Roberts Papers, Biblioteca
Berenson.
132. Kimball (1900–1997), a graduate of Yale’s prewar program with  a
New York–area practice, would direct the Academy until 1965. See his obitu-
ary, “Richard Arthur Kimball, Architect, 97,” New York Times, 31 Mar. 1997.
133. On this program, see Jane Loeffler, The Architecture of Diplomacy:
Building America’s Embassies (New York: Princeton Architectural Press,
1998).
134. The Valentines questioned this philosophy in 1973 in American
­Academy, as did Russell Lynes in 1969 in “After Hours: The Academy That
Overlooks Rome,” Harper’s Magazine, May 1969, 28–32.
135. David Jacob, fellow in architecture 1956–58, returned as a resident on
a 1969 Guggenheim Fellowship.
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136. Robert Venturi, “Robert Venturi’s Response at the Pritzker Prize
Award Ceremony at the Palacio de Iturbide, Mexico City, May 16, 1991,”
in Iconography and Electronics upon a Generic Architecture: A View from the
Drafting Room (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996), 99–100.
137. Richarda Rhoden, wife of 1952 sculpture fellow John Rhoden and
among the Academy community’s first African Americans, praised Roberts
as “one who has never held himself above any other human being” and
thanked him and Isabel for “your graciousness and kindness which you
extended on all occasions without fail.” Richarda Rhoden to L. Roberts,
29 Nov. 1959, Resignation Correspondence, Roberts Papers, Biblioteca
Berenson.
138. Howard Hibbard to L. Roberts, 10 Sept. 1959; Berthe Marti to L.
and I. Roberts, 16 Dec. 1960; Otto and Maria Brendel to Roberts, Christ-
mas card, n.d., Resignation Correspondence, Roberts Papers, Biblioteca
Berenson.
139. Sahl Swartz to L. and I. Roberts, 18 June 1959, Resignation Corre-
spondence, Roberts Papers, Biblioteca Berenson.
140. “Janetta” to I. Roberts, n.d.; and Robert Venturi to L. and I. Roberts,
8 June 1959, Resignation Correspondence, Roberts Papers, Biblioteca
Berenson.
141. “Al Sig. Direttore Laurance P. Roberts e Gentile Signora Roberts:
Noi, dipendenti dell’Accademia Americana, siamo qui riuniti per espri-
merle la nostra gratitudine ed il nostro affetto in questo particolare moment
in cui Ella lascia la Direzione dell’Accademia Americana. Abbiamo ammi-
rato nella Sua lunga attività presso l’Accademia, la Sua distinzione e la Sua
cortesia e vorremmo ora adjunque esternarLe in maniera concreta la nos-
tra riconoscenza. La preghiamo pertanto di voler accettare questa medaglia
aurea, contributo di tutto il personale, quale ricordo di tutti noi per Lei e
la Sig.ra Roberts e con l’augurio più fervido per il tempo futuro. [signed] Il
Personale dell’Accademia Americana in Roma, Roma, 12 Dicembre 1959.”
Resignation Correspondence, Roberts Papers, Biblioteca Berenson. The
Robertses’ archive does not hold the medallion in question.
142. A parallel case is found in the postwar Academy’s endeavors in musical
composition. These are discussed within the context of Cold War “cultural
diplomacy” in Martin Brody, “Class of ’54: Friendship and Ideology at
the American Academy in Rome,” in Music and Musical Composition at the
American Academy in Rome, ed. Martin Brody (Rochester, N.Y.: University
of Rochester Press, 2014), 222–56.
143. Yegül, Gentlemen of Instinct and Breeding, 106–7.
144. A. Richard Williams critiques the Academy’s East Coast allegiances
from the perspective of a Chicago-based architect in Sixty Years in Perspec-
tive: The American Academy in Rome (Rome: n.p., 1999).
145. Loeffler, Architecture of Diplomacy; Costanzo, “Architectural Amnesia.”
146. Smith to Manship, 7 Sept.1950.
“A T r u ly L i b e r a l O r i e n tat i o n ”    247