As a 2012 recipient of the Rome Prize by the American Academy, Rubin has spent the last year immersed from an objective distance.

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Distinguished by the Hacker Prize and the Silver Medal in Painting, he competed for the Rome Prize, which he won in 1959.

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Hours spent enjoying lamb, pasta, homemade wine and large Italian chocolate eggs, hollowed out with a prize inside was a perfectly local way to end a festive pilgrimage to Rome.

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