Sean Burkholder Becomes Tenth Member of Weitzman’s Faculty to Receive Rome Prize

Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture Sean Burkholder has been awarded the Gilmore D. Clarke and Michael Rapuano/Kate Lancaster Brewster Rome Prize to support his work on lake-based infrastructure and storytelling.

Awarded by the American Academy in Rome, the Rome Prize is a rigorous competition supporting innovative fellows in the arts, humanities, and sciences. It equips artists and scholars with the time, space, setting, and colleagues to explore and create in the singular city of Rome. The 35 recipients of the 2025–26 Rome Prize will reside at the Academy’s 11-acre grounds in the Eternal City for five to ten months, starting this September.

The Weitzman School counts nine members of the faculty as previous Rome Prize winners:

• Ashley Hahn (MSHP’08), Lecturer in Preservation (2019)
• Christopher Marcinkoski, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture; Principal, PORT Urbanism (2016)
• Randall Mason, Professor of Historic Preservation and City & Regional Planning; Director, Urban Heritage Project (2013)
• Karen M’Closkey, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture (2013)
• Joshua Mosley, Professor of Fine Arts (2006)
• Laurie Olin, Practice Professor Emeritus in Landscape Architecture (1974)
• Robert Gerard Pietrusko, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture; Principal, Warning Office (2021)
• Catherine Seavitt, Meyerson Professor and Chair of Landscape Architecture; Faculty co-director, McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology (1998)
• Fritz Steiner, Dean and Paley Professor; Faculty co-director, McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology (1998)

Burkholder, who shares the Gilmore D. Clarke and Michael Rapuano/Kate Lancaster Brewster Rome Prize with Karen Lutsky (MLA’11), is co-director of the Environmental Modeling Lab (EMLab) in the McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology and co-founder of the research and design practice Proof Projects.  His practice and research look broadly across issues faced by coastal landscapes while focusing particularly on lake-based geographies. As a member of the Dredge Research Collaborative, he believes that coastal sediments and processes serve as a common thread through many coastal circumstances, whether understood as positive or negative. More specifically, he works through methodologies such as adaptive management, environmental monitoring, speculation, and storytelling to inform positive futures while leveraging the potentials of temporality, curiosity, and experimentation as fundamental endeavors of landscape practice.

Burkholder’s first book, Five Bay Landscapes: Curious Explorations of the Great Lakes Region, co-authored with Lutsky, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2022. He is currently working on his second book Lakemaker: Surveys, Stories, and Speculations of Held Water, which will be published by AR+D. He coordinates the first-semester design studio (5010) and offers seminars and studios on topics including environmental modeling and monitoring, experimentation, counterfactual speculation, and coastal infrastructure.

Rome Prize winners are selected annually by juries of distinguished artists and scholars through a national competition. This year’s competition received 990 applications from applicants in 44 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and 17 different countries. The acceptance rate was 3.54 percent. The recipients range from 28 to 71 years old, with an average age of 45.

Since 1894, the American Academy in Rome has functioned as a residential center for research and creativity. Its purpose has always been to enable highly motivated scholars and artists to immerse themselves in the experience of Rome, ancient and modern, and to be inspired by daily exchange with the other members of this creative community. The Academy has made an outsized impact on the intellectual and cultural life of the United States, and its Fellows and Residents have been recognized with 622 Guggenheim Fellowships, 74 Pulitzer Prizes, 54 MacArthur Fellowships, 26 Grammy awards, 5 Pritzker Prizes, 9 Poet Laureate appointments, and 5 Nobel Prizes. Approximately 35 Fellows are selected as winners of the Rome Prize each year by rotating juries in the different fields.

Editor's Note: This story was updated to include Joshua Mosley, who was omitted at the time of its original publication.