ROME, ITALY.- The American Academy in Rome, a leading center for independent study and advanced research in the arts and humanities, is pleased to announce the first recipient of the Marian and Andrew Heiskell Visiting Critic and Journalist Award. 
Jed Perl, critic and author, will be in residence at the Academy for six weeks beginning in mid-February, 2003. Although critics and journalists have been in residence at the Academy before, the Marian and Andrew Heiskell Award is the first opportunity created specifically for professionals writing about culture.
“Through the initiation of the Heiskell Award, the American Academy means to extend a warm welcome to the men and women who write about art and culture,” said Academy President, Adele Chatfield-Taylor. “By providing an opportunity for journalists and critics like Jed Perl to reflect and participate in Academy life, which is so alive with work and debate, we believe we can advance our mission which is to foster better understanding of the arts and humanities internationally.” 
While in Rome, Mr. Perl will be finishing his forthcoming book, New Art City, which will be published by Knopf. “I’m exploring the change-everything years of mid-twentieth-century Manhattan,” said Perl, “when artists were possessed by the powerful contradictions of a melting pot city that had reached the boiling point. I know that my time in Rome, a city where artists have flourished in so many different periods, is going to sharpen my understanding of some major themes—the relationship of the artist and the city, the tension between the individual imagination and the spirit of the times.”
Mr. Perl is the author of three books, including Eyewitness: Reports from an Art World in Crisis; Paris without End: On French Art Since World War I; and Gallery Going: Four Seasons in the Art World. He reports on the contemporary art scene for The New Republic and has contributed to a variety of publications. He serves on the Board of Directors of Modern Painters. He received an Ingram merrill Foundation Award in 1994 and has taught art history at Pratt Institute, the Philadelphia College of Art and Parsons School of Design. Mr. Perl received his B.A. from Columbia College in 1972 and his M.F.A. in painting from Brooklyn College. He is a former Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture participant. 
The Marian and Andrew Heiskell Award is made possible by a generous grant from The New York Times Company Foundation. Journalists or critics are nominated by the Academy community and then invited by the Director of the American Academy in Rome. Award winners are in residence at the Academy for a period of one to six months and receive room and board, full privileges of the Academy’s distinguished community as well as a modest stipend for travel and expenses. 
Established in 1894 by architect Charles Follen McKim and chartered by an act of Congress in 1905, the American Academy in Rome is situated on Rome’s highest hill within the city’s ancient walls. Each year, through a national juried competition, the Academy offers U.S. citizens up to 30 Rome Prize fellowships in the following disciplines: Architecture, Design, Historic Preservation and Conservation, Landscape Architecture, Literature, Musical Composition, Visual Arts, and in humanistic approaches to Ancient, Medieval, Renaissance and Early Modern, and Modern Italian Studies. The annual application deadline is 1 November. Rome Prize winners are joined by a select group of residents and international affiliated fellowship members forming a post-graduate community of over 100 artists and scholars. For more information please visit www.aarome.org.