Hager e gli anni americani

The essay reconstructs the period spent by Hellmut Hager in America since 1966, when he was invited to give a six-month course at Penn State under a teacher exchange programme between Europe and the USA. In 1968 Hager began as a Visiting Professor giving Roman Baroque architecture classes and a seminar on Carlo Fontana. It was the prologue to his call to the College of Arts and Architecture at Penn State, occurred in January 1971. Only a year later, his appointment as Professor was enhanced by the position of Head of the Department of Art History, confirmed until 1996, which bears witness to his great managerial and organizational as well as scientific and humane skills. Hager’s great effort to end the work (with A. Braham) on Carlo Fontana’s drawings preserved at Windsor Castle in 1977 accompanied his teaching and research line. Conducting well-attended seminars, Hager involved his American students in the study of the educational works kept at the Accademia di San Luca, whose photographic reproductions could be analysed at Penn State. The results of these researches on the drawings of the Concorsi Clementini of the first half of the eighteenth century were incorporated into the catalogue accompanying the two exhibitions held in the USA between 1981 and 1982 and entitled Architectural Fantasy and Reality. Hager availed himself of numerous local collaborators for these editorial works, pushing a good part of the department to work on the themes of the Roman Baroque architectural drawing. In this phase, the collaboration with Susan Scott was crucial in preparing a series of periodical publications, which also became famous in Europe. Called «Papers in Art History from The Pennsylvania State University», they formed a series that contained archival novelties and new approaches to art criticism. Such initiatives contributed to the various awards that Hager received from his own university. These included the titles of Fellow of the Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies (1978), Distinguished Professor (1990), and subsequently Professor Emeritus (2001), among others. Hager was awarded the designation of Evan Pugh Professor by the university for his teaching and scientific merits.