Professor Miya Masaoka Wins Rome Prize

Associate Professor and Director Sound Art Miya Masaoka has been announced as one of the winners of the prestigious Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome. 

Each year, the Rome Prize and Italian Fellowships are awarded to support advanced independent work and research in the arts and humanities. Among a cohort of thirty-eight winners, Masaoka receives the honor in the category of musical composition. The prize will entitle her to a stipend, workspace, and room and board at the Academy’s eleven-acre campus on the Janiculum Hill in Rome, starting September 2022. 

The American Academy in Rome President and CEO, Mark Robins, announced, “This year’s Rome Prize winners and Italian Fellows represent the diversity of the United States, and their projects build on the Academy’s commitment to the global impact of the arts and humanities.”

Rome Prize winners are selected annually by independent juries of distinguished artists and scholars through a highly competitive national competition. A full list of the 2022-23 Rome Prize winners and Italian Fellows can be found here. 

Miya Masaoka is an American composer and sound artist. Her work explores bodily perception of vibration, movement and time while foregrounding complex timbre relationships. In 2018 she joined the Columbia University Visual Arts Department as an Associate Professor, where she is the director of the Sound Art Program, a joint program with the Computer Music Center. A 2019 Studio Artist for the Park Avenue Armory, Masaoka has also received the Doris Duke Artist Award in 2013, a Fulbright Fellowship to Japan in 2016, and an Alpert Award in 2003. Her work has been presented at the Venice Biennale, MoMA PS1, Kunstmuseum Bonn, and the Park Avenue Armory.  She has been commissioned by and collaborated with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, the Glasgow Choir, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), Bang on a Can, Jack Quartet, Del Sol, Momenta and the S.E.M. Ensemble. She has a 2019 commission for an outdoor installation at the Caramoor, Katonah, New York.