May 14, 2008 — Matthew Hural and Scott Craver from the University of Virginia have received American Academy in Rome Prizes this year.

The Rome Prizes provide fellowships that allow emerging artists and scholars to refine and expand their work at the American Academy in Rome.

Hural, a lecturer in the Department of Architecture, won the Arnold W. Brunner Rome Prize for his project, "Between Inside and Out: Aurelian Gates." Hural, who received both bachelor's and master's degrees from U.Va.'s School of Architecture in 2003 and 2007, respectively, also is a designer at Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects in Charlottesville. He will spend 11 months in residence in Rome on his project, which will culminate in an exhibit about the ancient gates of the fortress walls built around Rome in the third century A.D.

Craver, a graduate student in the McIntire Department of Art, won the Emeline Hill Richardson/Samuel H. Kress Foundation Pre-Doctoral Rome Prize for a two-year fellowship to research and complete his doctoral dissertation on "Patterns of Complexity: An Index and Analysis of Urban Property Investment at Pompeii." For his project, the first to examine the reasons for urban property investment at Pompeii on a citywide scale, he will draw upon evidence from the physical remains of the city and from excavation archives, scholarly publications and ancient legal texts.

Established in 1894 and chartered by an act of Congress in 1905, the American Academy in Rome is a center that sustains independent artistic pursuits and humanistic studies. Through an annual national competition, the Rome Prize is awarded to 15 emerging artists and 15 scholars working in Italian studies.