Villa Massimo at Neuhardenberg Castle
Presentation of the 2019/2020 German Academy Rome residency winners
The Rome residency awarded by the German Academy Rome Villa Massimo is considered one of the most important awards for German artists, or international artists who live and work in Germany. The Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media awards a Rome residency, each lasting ten months, to nine artists selected by four different expert juries. Rome residency winners are always internationally renowned, outstanding professional artists working in the fields of architecture, visual art, literature and musical composition. In Rome, they reside in accommodation with an adjacent studio where they work on their art projects during their stay, surrounded by an expansive park with ancient trees. The residency in Rome was established to permit artists to gain inspiration and to focus on their art without financial pressures. The German Academy Rome was founded by Eduard Arnhold, a patron of the arts from Berlin, in 1910 and later gifted to the state of Prussia.
Following the annual Villa Massimo Night – a presentation of the works conceived or created in Rome – at the Gropius Bau in Berlin, the Villa Massimo and the Stiftung Schloss Neuhardenberg foundation will now jointly exhibit the works of the 2019/2020 Rome residency winners both indoors as well as outdoors throughout the extensive grounds of the Neuhardenberg Castle estate over a period of seven weeks.
The exhibition at Neuhardenberg Castle marks the start of the realisation of a long-harboured ambition of the director of Villa Massimo, Dr Julia Draganović, to not only show the works of the Rome residency winners exclusively in Berlin but also in various regions throughout Germany in future.
