Peter Weller G'05: Florence and the Machine

There's a fountain in the garden of Syracuse University's Florence, Italy, campus that has special meaning for Peter Weller G'04. Paid for and commissioned by his mother, Dorothy, the fountain is a reminder of who first introduced Weller to fine art.

Weller, an actor best known for playing the title character in the 1987 film "RoboCop," is also a scholar and Renaissance art historian. He enrolled in Syracuse University's summer Italian art program with Professor Gary Radke when he was 51. Three years later, he entered the Syracuse Florence Italy graduate program, earning a master's degree in Italian Renaissance art history. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in Italian Renaissance art history at UCLA in 2014.

Now Weller is giving back to Syracuse University and art history students in the College of Arts and Sciences through the establishment of the Theodore, Martha and Peter Weller Scholarship Fund.

Easing the Cost of Education

Graduate school can be expensive. Graduate school in Europe can be even more costly. "The Syracuse Florence master of arts program is a gift beyond dreams for the humanities student," says Weller. "But college is costly, and college abroad—particularly on the graduate levels—costs even more."

As a successful actor, Weller had the "loot," as he says, to pay for graduate school. But he noticed that this was not the case for many of his classmates. "The undergraduate possibilities for financial assistance, in my opinion, far exceed those limited lines of relief for graduate students," he explains. The need for graduate school financial assistance was something Weller also witnessed when he earned his Ph.D. at UCLA several years later.

"This scholarship fund marks my gratitude to Syracuse University, to Florence, to Italy and to all of its fine art and study of that art for opening so many new possibilities in my life and embellishing the gifts that I had already received through family, film, theater and music," says Weller. He saw a need in the arena of one of his passions—the Renaissance—and decided to address it. This is a process that other donors can do as well.

It is the Weller family's hope now that any graduate student wishing to study art history in Florence will have the opportunity to do so with the Theodore, Martha and Peter Weller Scholarship Fund, named as well for son, Teddy (Theodore), and wife, Sheri (Martha).

A Lifelong Interest

Though he's best known for his acting roles in "RoboCop," "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension," "24" and "Dexter," as well as a second career in directing television, Weller has long harbored a love of art. His mother, who came from a musical family, tried to interest him in pictorial art, to little avail. His interest wasn't truly piqued until 1981, when actress, Ali MacGraw—who had studied studio arts, design and art history at Wellesley College—took him to the largest Picasso exhibit to date at the New York's Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition celebrated the return of Picasso's anti-war oil mural "Guernica" to Spain after four decades on loan to the American museum.

Around 1992, Oscar-winning cinematographer Vittorio Storaro told Weller that, as much as he might appreciate modern or contemporary art, he had no "context" unless he journeyed to Padua in northern Italy to visit Giotto's 1306 fresco cycle narrative of Mary and Jesus at the Scrovegni Chapel.

"I went and was stunned," says Weller. "I return every year."

Studying in Florence

Weller decided he wanted to pursue an education in art and sought advice from friends on where to study. Among these friends were Dr. Maria Connelli, dean of the School of Visual, Media and Performing Arts at Brooklyn College and Dr. Walter Liedtke, Metropolitan Museum of Art's curator of Dutch and Flemish paintings. They both recommended Syracuse's program in Florence.

With no undergraduate credits in art history (he had studied theater arts at the University of North Texas), Weller audited four undergraduate classes a day, then did his master's coursework in the afternoon and evening. "It almost buried me," says Weller of the five-month intensive program. "I mean, I had a career in film! Why was I killing myself for this?"

Weller considered leaving the challenging program, but his mother, his now-wife, Sheri, and Syracuse University Florence professor Rab Hatfield convinced him to stay. Hatfield even asked him to be his teaching assistant for the returning semester.

He stayed and had what he describes as possibly one of three most galvanizing years of his life. "To return to academia, particularly in Italy, in front of the art no less, is both overwhelming in beauty and awe, as well as germane to major migraines," Weller says.

Teaching at Syracuse University

Film fans may have noticed Weller on the Syracuse campus, too. Several years ago, he taught the popular class Hollywood and the Roman Empire.

Weller says he would teach the class again in a second, and says that Hollywood, for the most part, has taken liberties with a few facts on ancient Rome but not as many as one would think. He's become such an avid aficionado of late Republic-early Imperial Rome, that he hosted the History Channel's "Engineering an Empire" documentary series on the art and architecture of the past.

For several decades, the Weller family has lived, part-time, on the Amafi Coast of Italy where he and Sheri were married, and son, Theodore, was baptized.

They visit Florence and the Syracuse Campus of Florence at least once a year.

"It is only fitting that my wife and son forever honor Syracuse and Italy by title of this gift. I pray that Teddy attends, or, at least, frequently visits the Syracuse campus in Florence for the duration of his life."