January 2007 began in style with the invasion of Australian students of art history, who arrived like the cavalry to inject new energy and enthusiasm into the life of the British School. The biennial Melbourne University art history course, ably devised and directed by David Marshall and Lisa Beaven, is now a regular and welcome component of the variety of academic courses and conferences held at BSR. Entitled Renaissance and Baroque Rome 1450-1750, this year it involved 15 students and provided a fine balance of on-site visits and in-house lectures. During the Director’s absence on leave in January and February, the ship was ably steered by Sue Russell, who then subsequently took a well-earned sabbatical in London after his return. Before she left, Sue and her Research Assistant, Roberto Cobianchi, led a memorable visit to three Renaissance villas near Frascati (the villas Mondragone, Falconieri and Aldobrandini).
Balsdon Fellow Dr Susan Walker, from the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, made a memorable impression on the British School throughout the spring with her own brand of dynamic and inspirational scholarship. She organized a series of ‘museum makeovers’ (her own phrase) and was unfailingly generous with her time and expertise. She led groups of scholars on a variety of expeditions including the Capitoline Museums, the Montemartini Museum and the Ara Pacis. She was also a regular star of the newly-installed table-tennis table, housed in the residents’ common room, a welcome innovation which has served as a social melting-pot for staff and scholars alike. 
We are very pleased to welcome Helen Patterson back to the School in her new role as Molly Cotton Fellow, overseeing the Tiber Valley Project. She will also be working with the ceramics reference collection from the South Etruria project and involved in the excavation projects of Forum Novum and Falacrinae. 
On a sadder note, the BSR was sorry to lose some of its devoted friends during this past academic year. Sir Stephen Egerton, who died in September 2006, was Her Majesty’s Ambassador to Rome between 1989 and 1992, and a frequent visitor to the school. He was a constant and witty source of encouragement and support, making an indelible mark on all who knew him, and he is very much mourned. His widow, Caroline, has long been a key figure in the fund-raising activities of the school and continues to help in matters of long-term planning with her unfailing wisdom and energy.
We are also sad to announce the death of Bill Gale, whose generosity has funded the Macquarie University Gale Scholarship, currently held by Peter Edwell, and of Riccardo Francovich, Honorary Fellow and long-standing friend of the School, and an inspirational figure in early medieval archaeology.

Jo Wallace Hadrill

Award-holders at BSR this summer

Humanities

Andrew Moore (Paul Mellon Centre Rome Fellow), Carol Richardson (Paul Mellon Centre Rome Fellow), Susan Walker (Balsdon Fellow), Robert Coates-Stephens (Cary Fellow), Helen Patterson (Molly Cotton Fellow), Simon Martin (Rome Fellow), Natasja de Bruijn (Rome Fellow), Meredith Carew (Rome Scholar), Miles Pattenden (Rome Scholar), Isabelle Vella Gregory (Ralegh Radford Rome Scholar), Roslynne Bell (Rome Awardee), Maximilian Gwiazda (Rome Awardee), Peter Edwell (Maquarie University Gale Scholar

Fine Arts

Richard Clegg (Abbey Fellow in Painting), Helen Baker (Abbey Fellow in Painting), Stephen Wilson (Abbey Scholar in Painting), Clara Ursitti (ACE Helen Chadwick Fellow), Anthony Lloyd (Australia Council Resident Artist), Felicity Peters (Australia Council Resident Artist), Colin Langridge (Australia Council Resident Artist), Max Dewdney (Rome Scholar in Architecture), James Pyman (Rome Scholar in the Fine Arts), Aisling Hedgecock (Sainsbury Scholar in Painting and Sculpture), John Walter (Sainsbury Scholar in Painting and Sculpture), Melanie Counsell (Sargant Fellow), Edwina Ashton (Wingate Scholar)

Recent Archaeology at the British School

The archaeology programme began the year with a geophysical survey in the heart of Rome. A georadar survey was undertaken on behalf of the Soprintendenza Archeologica di Roma of the Domus Aurea, Nero’s Golden Palace. The aim was to provide the authority with further information concerning the state of preservation of this famous monument, which recently has partially reopened to the public. This was followed by survey at Bolsena to the north of Rome, and another magnetometry survey at Bagni di Tivoli, a few kilometres from Hadrian’s Villa. The survey, which saw the first use of two new gradiometers bought by the School, revealed a previously unknown bath or villa complex.
Further field seasons were also conducted by the joint teams from the School and the APSS (Archaeological Prospection Services of Southampton) at Villa Magna, the Imperial villa of Marcus Aurelius, on behalf of Lisa Fentress and at Falacrinae (Cittareale), where the School has conducted an excavation (directed by Helen Patterson and Filippo Coarelli) for the last two years with the University of Perugia. This year’s excavations will continue to focus on the site of the possible vicus of Falacrinae, the birthplace of the Emperor Vespasian, and on the site of a potential villa where the geophysics was conducted.
Alongside this geophysical research, preparations have started from this year’s first season of excavations at Portus by Professor Simon Keay. Preliminary work has included a detailed topographical survey of the area, as well as the collection of core samples and resistance profiles. The excavation will take place in September and continue for 5 weeks, involving students from the Universities of Southampton and Cambridge, as well as from the University of Rome and from Spain.
Finally, two new research assistants joined the team in the Camerone at the beginning of the year. Leonie Pett, a post-graduate from the University of Exeter, and Elizabeth DeGaetano, currently studying for her PhD part-time at the University of Southampton, will both play a crucial role in helping with the geophysics research and the new project at Portus.

Stephen Kay

Contemporary Arts Programme this Spring/Summer

Spring has been a very active period for the Contemporary Arts Programme with a solo show by Douglas Gordon entitled Pretty much every film and video work from about 1992 until now. To be seen on monitors, some with headphones, others run silently, and all simultaneously (1992-2007), a complete retrospective (in one room) of his cinematic work with 50 monitors showing videos. Live Life, was a performance marathon which ‘invaded’ public and private spaces of the British School from 6pm on Sunday 3 June to 1am of the following day, and there was also the publication of the first catalogue ever dedicated to Ian Kiaer with texts by Mark Godfrey and Cristiana Perrella, and an interview by Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith. All the events received considerable attention from the press and were very well attended by the public.

News from the Library

The first six months of 2007 have been extremely positive for the BSR Library and Archive in many ways and we are very grateful for all the support we have received.
The British Academy funded the purchase for the BSR Library of the new cataloguing system, Millennium, chosen by the URBS consortium. The new on-line catalogue has been available for readers since March and can be found at www.reteurbs.org.
Working together with the BSR Development Advisory Group we have received generous funding from the D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust, Hugh Macdonald Buchanan and the PF Charitable Trust for our retrospective conversion project. Work has begun on the History section of the Library, cataloguing all pre-1992 holdings onto the on-line catalogue.
Major funding for our conservation projects has been received from the John R. Murray Trust and we are very grateful for this extremely generous support. The remaining ten albums of photographs taken by Thomas Ashby between 1890 and 1925 will be restored and work will begin on the conservation of the bound volumes of prints and engravings of Rome from the 16th–18th centuries in our rare book collection.
Thanks to Professor David Marshall of the University of Melbourne, the Australian Research Council has agreed to fund a pilot project to digitize and catalogue 100 prints and engravings from the Library’s print collection. These images will then be available to scholars and students world-wide.
In February the BSR Archive hosted a well-attended and very successful exhibition of 70 photographs, La luce dell’ombra: fotografie di Lorenzo Scaramella (for image, see front cover). Scaramella, an expert in the history of photographic techniques who teaches at Naples University and has been collaborating with the Archive for the past 4 years, specializes in photographing Greek and Roman and Renaissance and Baroque sculpture in Italian museums which he then prints using various 19thcentury printing techniques.                                                                        
Valerie Scott

RECENT B.S.R.PUBLICATIONS

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