Mark Robbins was elected President and CEO of The American Academy in Rome in fall 2013 following an international search, and brings to the Academy extensive experience as an artist, architect and educator. Mark came to the Academy from hisposition as Executive Director of the International Center of Photography in New York, a museum and educational institution dedicated to the presentation and interpretation of the reproduced image. From 2004 to 2012, as Dean and Professor at Syracuse University School of Architecture and University Senior Advisor on Architecture and Urban Initiatives, he had a transformative role on both the school and the city. While Director of Design at the National Endowment for the Arts, from 1999-2002, Mark led the development of an aggressive program to strengthen the presence of innovative design in the public realm. From 1993 to 1999, he was Curator of Architecture at the Wexner Center for the Arts, where he created a laboratory for innovative work, and Associate Professor at the Knowlton School of Architecture at Ohio State University. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Virginia, Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), Georgia Institute of Technology and the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Mark’s creative work bridges the fields of art and architecture, encompassing photography, installations, and site-specific projects. It has been exhibited in numerous venues throughout the United States and abroad, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Museum of Modern Art Saitama, Japan; the Wexner Center for theArts; and the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. Recent one person shows include Strong+Silent at the Clifford Gallery, Colgate University; Guest|Host, NoName Gallery, Bangkok; and Student-Teacher at the KIST Gallery, Kigali, Rwanda. Households, a photographic series on domestic space was published by The Monacelli Press in 2006. Angles of Incidence, an earlier monograph on Mark’s projects, was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 1996. He is an author and editor of two book series on design, architecture, and urban planning. His latest book, American City X was published in Spring 2014. Mark’s numerous prizes and awards include a 1996 Rome Prize in Design, and a fellowship in the visual arts from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.