Jefferson Pinder awarded Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome

Jefferson Pinder will be a 2025-2026 Rome Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Rome. 

Drawing connections among Italian Neorealism, Arte Povera, and the Black Aesthetic art movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Jefferson will create a choreographed and interventionist trash cleaning performance in the streets of Rome. The performance will respond to the role of the Spazzino, or streetsweeper, as black immigrants work in the face of Italy’s waste crisis.

The Rome Prize equips artists and scholars with the time, space, setting, and colleagues to explore and create in the singular city of Rome.

“The Rome Prize is one of the world’s most prestigious fellowship programs and provides the rare opportunity for scholars and artists across a range of subfields to collaborate with each other,” said Peter N. Miller, President of the American Academy in Rome. “Presented with the opportunity to deeply engage with their work and with that of the other fellows, Rome Prize winners return home with perspectives profoundly enriched by their immersion in an interdisciplinary community set in Rome. The winners form the heart of the Academy, embodying its ethos and extending its international impact through their work now and into the future.”