Exploratorium’s Adrian Van Allen Wins Prestigious Rome Prize in Design

The trustees of the American Academy in Rome announced that Adrian Van Allen, a multimedia designer and exhibit developer at San Francisco’s Exploratorium, has won the prestigious Rome Prize in design to study and work in Rome in March of 2010. All of the winners of the 113th annual Rome Prize Competition are provided with a stipend, a study or studio, and room and board for a period of 6 months to 2 years. Van Allen joins a distinguished list of architects, artists, and academics who won the prize this year.

Van Allen’s proposal — Scientiae Historia Romae: An Interactive Map — will be a multi-layered interactive map that lets visitors explore the evolution of the sciences in the city of Rome, from the advances in the time of Pliny the Elder to the current biotechnological wonders of the 21st century. Portable to a website or a handheld device, visitors will explore interactive maps laced with podcasts, articles, animations and videos allowing them to mine the history of particular locations throughout the city and its environs. Downloadable paper models of scientific objects and printable maps with walking tours will offer both high- and low-tech interaction with the site content. The proposal is online at http://rome.mappingscience.net/.

About Adrian Van Allen
Adrian Van Allen is a multimedia artist, writer, and designer. She creates multimedia exhibits and web sites for the Exploratorium Museum. She has worked with NASA, the Smithsonian, The Department of Archaeology at UC Berkeley, and wrote the Post Martha column for ReadyMade magazine. Van Allen’s art work engages the history of science, emerging technology and taxonomy through installations, interactive media art, video, scale models, artist books, drawings, photographs, and transgenic taxidermy.

About the Rome Prize
The Rome Prize is awarded annually through an open competition that is juried by leading artists and scholars in the fellowship fields. Forty-eight individuals were invited to make up nine juries to review the applications. The juries this year were chaired by C. Brian Rose, FAAR’92 (Ancient Studies), James Corner (Design); Charles Granquist (Historic Preservation & Conservation), Allan Gurganus (Literature, through the Committee for Awards of the American Academy of Arts and Letters), Rachel Jacoff (Medieval Studies), Charles S. Maier (Modern Italian Studies), Donald Crockett (Musical Composition), Walter Stephens (Renaissance and
Early Modern Studies), and Fred Wilson (Visual Arts).

About the American Academy in Rome
Established in 1894 and chartered by an Act of Congress in 1905, the American Academy in Rome is a center that sustains independent artistic pursuits and humanistic studies. It is situated on the Janiculum, the highest hill within the walls of Rome. Each year, through a national competition, the Rome Prize is awarded to up to 30 individuals — emerging artists (working in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Design, Historic Preservation and Conservation, Literature, Musical Composition, or Visual Arts) and scholars (working in Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and Early Modern, or Modern Italian Studies). The application deadline is November 1st. The Academy community also includes invited Residents and Affiliated Fellows. For more information, please visit www.aarome.org

About the Exploratorium
The Exploratorium is a public educational institution for peoples of all ages. This innovative museum of science, technology, art, and human perception provides for the general public, even those with the most limited scientific knowledge, an experience enabling them to understand science and nature. This year the Exploratorium’s audience numbers over 20 million at exhibits at science centers and other locations worldwide. More than 600,000 visitors will come to the Exploratorium itself to interact with the original, hands-on exhibits; 6,000 teachers will participate in professional development programs; 130,000 students and teachers visit on school field trips; and another 5,000 students, many from San Francisco’s underserved neighborhoods, will benefit from the Children’s Educational Outreach Program. 50,000 copies of Exploratorium publications are sold, and its award-winning Web site receives 28 million unique visits during the year. At the 4th Science Center World Congress in Rio in 2005, science centers from five continents ranked the Exploratorium as the number one science center in the world.