Bio-bibliography

USA

James Sloss Ackerman

2001 Balzan Prize for History of Architecture

For his outstanding work on the history of Renaissance architecture, which contributed to the modern approach to architectural history based on a systematic critical examination of written and visual sources.

James Sloss Ackerman, born in San Francisco, California, on 8 November 1919, is an American citizen (†2016).

Professor Emeritus, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

His professional history:
Lecturer at Yale University (1946, 1949); Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome (1949-1952); Fulbright Fellowship (1951-1952); Assistant Professor, University of California, Berkeley (1952-1960); Editor-in-Chief of The Art Bulletin (1956-1960); 25th Anniversary Medal of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, for distinguished service to art education (1957); Fellow of the Council on the Humanities, Princeton University (1960-1961); at Harvard University (1961-1990): Professor of Fine Arts, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Fine Arts (1983-), Chairman (1963-1968, 1982-1984), Walter Channing Cabot Faculty Fellow (1988), Visiting Professor of Architecture at the Graduate School of Design (1997, 1999), Emeritus since 1990; Co-Founder and President of the Film Study Center at Harvard University (1967-1975); Trustee of the American Academy in Rome (1967-1984); Slade Professor of Fine Arts, University of Cambridge, UK (1969-1970); member of the Steering Committee of the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio, Vicenza (since 1969); Centennial Award of the University of California, Berkeley (1970); Senior Fellow of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Washington, Resident scholar of the American Academy in Rome (1974-1975); Trustee (1977-1987) and President (1977-1979) of the Artists Foundation; member of the Council of Scholars, Library of Congress, Washington (1980-1982); Mellon Lecturer at the National Gallery of Art, Washington (1985); Meyer Schapiro Visiting Professor of Art History (1988) and Visiting Professor of Art History (1991) at the Columbia University, New York; Senior Fulbright Fellowhips at the Art History Panel (1989-1992); Distinguished Teaching Award from the College Art Association, New York (1991); Visiting Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities at the New York University (1992); Visiting Professor of Fine Arts at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts (1992); Editor (1992-1994) and member of the Editorial Board (to date) of the Annali di Architettura; Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, New York (1993); Premio Daria Borghese, Rome (1995); Visiting Professor of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge (1996); Paul Kristeller Lifetime Achievement Award of the Renaissance Society of America, New York (1998).

He is a Fellow, a Corresponding or Honorary Fellow of numerous national and foreign learned societies such as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy in Rome, the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the Accademia Olimpica in Vicenza, the Royal Society of Humanities at Uppsala, the Ateneo Veneto in Venice, the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften in Munich and the Accademia Nazionale di San Luca in Rome.

Among his honours we mention the Grand Officer in the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic and honorary degrees from Kenyon College (Gambier, OH), University of Maryland Baltimore County, College of Art of the Maryland Institute (Baltimore), Massachusetts College of Art (Boston) and Istituto Universitario di Architettura at Venice.
In addition to his books, he has also made two films and written numerous essays and articles on the history of architecture, critical and historical theory, and the interaction between art and science.

Books:

– The Cortile del Belvedere, Vatican City, 1954;
– The Architecture of Michelangelo, London/New York, 1961 (Hitchcock Medal, College Art Association);
– Art and Archaeology (with Rhys Carpenter), Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1962;
– Palladio, Harmondsworth, 1966;
– Palladio’s Villas, New York, 1967;
– The Villa: Form and Ideology of Country Houses, Princeton University Press and Thames and Hudson, London, 1990;
– Distance Points: Essays in Theory and Renaissance Art and Architecture, Cambridge, Mass. 1991 (American Institute of Architects Award in History and Theory, 1992);
– Palladio: in che senso classico?, Vicenza, 1993;
– Osservazioni sui progetti di chiese di Leonardo da Vinci, Vicenza, privately printed, 1998;
– Conventions of Architectural Drawing: Representation and Misrepresentation, (co-editor, with Wolfgang Jung), Cambridge, Mass., 2000;
– Origins, Imitation, Conventions, Cambridge, Mass., forthcoming, November 2001.

Films:

– Looking for Renaissance Rome (with John Terry, Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt), 1976;
– Palladio the Architect and His Influence in America (with John Terry), 1980 (distributed by the Museum of Modern Art, New York).

 
(October 2001)