Vernon Minor, associate professor in the departments of fine arts and comparative literature/humanities at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has been selected to receive the Rome Prize, a fellowship awarded by the American Academy in Rome.
The Rome Prize is the most prestigious grant for a scholar studying Roman art history in the United States.
Minor's award is the National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship in the History of Art, as part of the School of Classical Studies.
"This is a very prestigious National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship -- the only senior Fellowship given in art history," said Peter Spear, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
"It is an honor for the College of Arts and Sciences and his home departments, as well as for Professor Minor," Spear said. "This award reflects the very high quality of our faculty and their ability to bring world-class, cutting-edge scholarship into the classroom for the benefit of our students."
The American Academy in Rome is the only American overseas center for independent study and advanced research in the fine arts and the humanities. The academy operates a program of fellowships and residences that has at its core the development of gifted American artists and scholars. Each year, through a national competition, the academy awards fellowships in fine arts and pre-and post-doctoral fellowships in the humanities. A jury of experts reviews past work and the proposed project of each applicant.
Minor's winning proposal was "Arcadian Power: The Accademia degli Arcadi, Artistic Theory, and the politics of Taste in 18th Century Rome."
He will continue research on the importance of the Academy for defining artistic theory and the concept of taste for Italian art of the 18th century.
"My final project while a resident in Rome will be to complete the writing, while concentrating on the documents at the Biblioteca Angelica, the last home of the Accademia degli Arcadi. It will take about eight months of work, where I will also use the Bibliotheca Hertziana, the Vatican Library and the library at the American Academy in Rome to finish my project," he said.
Minor's major area of research is baroque. He began teaching at 抖阴短视频-Boulder in 1976. His courses include Renaissance, baroque, theory of art history and Italian baroque art. He also has directed an art history program in Florence and Rome for 13 summers for the Study Abroad program.
Minor earned his doctorate in art history from the University of Kansas. He has published several books, including "Baroque and Rococo: Art and Culture, 1600-1750, available this summer, and "Passive Tranquility: the Sculpture of Filippo della Valle, 1997, and "Art History聮s History."
Minor was also named the first alternate for the 2000 Fulbright Senior Research Fellowship. His many other distinctions include membership in the Institute for Advanced Study, School of Historical Studies, Princeton, where his project, "Arcadian Power: the Politics of Taste in Early 18th-Century Rome," was first presented as a lecture given to the School of Historical Studies in 1998.
Minor was interviewed in New York and chosen over many other national senior art historians. He will be at the academy for eight and a half months starting in September 99.
In addition to providing undergraduate and graduate degrees in art history, the fine arts department offers a foreign study program, Art History in Italy, in conjunction with the Study Abroad Office at 抖阴短视频-Boulder.