2011-2012 - The Italian Academy - Columbia University

spectrum in the U.S., Spain, Italy, and elsewhere in Europe as well
as in Latin America. No more striking testimony to the influence of
Italian culture could have been demonstrated both by the subject of
the conference and by the intensity of the discussions it generated.
In short, no event at the Academy this year was anything but
well attended—usually a sell-out audience—and enthusiastically
received.
One of the best ways of getting a sense of the myriad activities of
the Academy is through our website, which not only provides much
information about our programs and events, but also contains a large
selection of videos of speakers and performers at Academy events (as
well as postings to the public video-hosting platform Vimeo).
Amongst our many collaborative projects with Columbia and
other institutions I should mention APIA—the Academies Project at
the Italian Academy—which has as its aim the complete digitalization
of books devoted to the history of Academies (in which Italy
played a more central role than any other European country). APIA
is a collaborative project with the Warburg Institute in London, the
Institut de France and a number of other European and American institutions
(including, of course, Columbia’s outstanding Rare Books
Library), and has been partly funded by grants from the Kress Foundation,
to whom, as always, the Academy is most grateful. Marcello
Simonetta and Noga Arikha have worked with great innovativeness
and energy on this project, in collaboration with Abigail Asher.
The Art and Neuroscience project continues to be a model for
groundbreaking work in this ever-more flourishing cross-disciplinary
field. It is to be hoped that Columbia as a whole, following the
model we set up over ten years ago, will soon adopt an undergraduate
and graduate program along the lines we have pioneered.
This year we laid the groundwork for a new Academy project,
organized in conjunction with the Heyman Center for the Humanities
at Columbia, under the direction of Professor Mark Mazower, on
Law and its Manifestations. It will support research and seminars on
themes that range from law and its images to questions of natural
law and justice, and will involve a number of universities in Germany,
Italy and France (so far).
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