Our celebration of seventy-five years of The Fountainhead continues this month with “Filming The Fountainhead: Ayn Rand’s First Plan” by Shoshana Milgram.
Ayn Rand originally envisioned Atlas Shrugged as a socio-political novel that would build on the ethical ideas of The Fountainhead, but as she worked on Atlas, she developed and revised her ethical thought in unexpected ways. In his lecture course “Ayn Rand’s Ethics: From The Fountainhead to Atlas Shrugged,” available at ARI’s eStore, Darryl Wright explores how, and why, her ideas changed — as well as what did not change.
2018 marks the 75th anniversary of the publication of Ayn Rand’s bestselling novel The Fountainhead. Its themes of independence and integrity — and its protagonist, Howard Roark — continue to resonate with and inspire readers of all ages.
Philosopher Robert Mayhew discusses the inability of a New York Times drama critic to appreciate Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead: “The sound perception of an ant does not include thunder.”
Following the recent Ivo Van Hove international production of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Gilman Opera House, a panel discussion appeared on Facebook Live. The panelists were Gregory Salmieri, philosophy fellow at the Anthem Foundation; Shoshana Milgram, associate professor of English at Virginia Tech; and Ann Ciccolella, artistic director at Austin Shakespeare.
ARI has held worldwide essay contests for students on Ayn Rand’s fiction for thirty years. This year we will award over 750 prizes totaling more than $130,000. Last year’s contestants read and responded to essay prompts on Ayn Rand’s Anthem, The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged. You can read all three winning essays on our essay contest page.
Those in the New York City area are invited to a free panel discussion of the Ivo Van Hove international production of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, which will soon be opening at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Gilman Opera House.
In 1997, Lisa Kostova, a high school student in Bulgaria, submitted an essay on Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. Thanks to the prize she won, she was able to travel to the United States to further her education and establish a promising career. Lisa recently wrote to ARI to tell us her story.
In today’s New York Times, author and columnist James B. Stewart quotes Yaron Brook, the Ayn Rand Institute’s executive chairman, at length in an article titled “As a Guru, Ayn Rand May Have Limits. Ask Travis Kalanick.” The article discusses Rand’s influence on a growing number of businessmen and entrepreneurs, including Kalanick, the recently departed chief executive of Uber. Kalanick, the article points out, was a fan who even used cover art from her novel The Fountainhead as his avatar on Twitter.
Today, March 23, BBC Witness broadcast an interview with Leonard Peikoff, Ayn Rand’s foremost student and today’s leading expert on Objectivism, on Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged.
