American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 250-member honor society. Its goal is to support excellence in American literature, music, and art. It is in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is in Audubon Terrace on Broadway between West 155th and 156th Streets, with the Hispanic Society of America and Boricua College.
The academy's galleries are open to the public. Exhibits include paintings, sculptures, photographs and works on paper from contemporary artists chosen by its members. Also works by newly elected members and award winners are shown. A permanent exhibit of the recreated studio of composer Charles Ives was opened in 2014.[1]
Musicians and engineers like to record live there because the acoustics are among the city's finest. Hundreds of commercial recordings have been made there.[2][3]
Membership
Members are chosen for life. They have been some of the leading people in American art. Members are in committees that give annual prizes to help new artists.[4]
Women were not elected to membership in the early years.[5] In 1908, poet Julia Ward Howe was elected to the AAA, becoming the first female member.[6]
This is a list of some past members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Institute and Academy of Arts and Letters:[7]
- Henry Brooks Adams[8]
- Herbert Adams[9]
- Henry Mills Alden[8]
- Nelson Algren
- Hannah Arendt
- Newton Arvin[10]
- Wystan Hugh Auden
- Paul Wayland Bartlett[9]
- Chester Beach[11]
- Stephen Vincent Benét
- William Rose Benét
- Edwin Howland Blashfield[9]
- William Brownell[9]
- George de Forest Brush[8]
- John Burroughs[12]
- William S. Burroughs
- Nicholas Murray Butler[9]
- George Washington Cable[9]
- Hortense Calisher[13]
- Joseph Campbell[14]
- George Whitefield Chadwick[9]
- William Merritt Chase[9]
- Chou Wen-chung
- Timothy Cole[8]
- Kenyon Cox[8]
- John Dos Passos
- Bob Dylan[15]
- Thomas Harlan Ellett[16]
- Stanley Elkin
- Duke Ellington
- Ralph Ellison
- Daniel Chester French[9]
- William Gaddis[17]
- Hamlin Garland[18]
- Charles Dana Gibson[12]
- Cass Gilbert[8]
- Richard Watson Gilder
- Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve[8]
- Brendan Gill
- William Gillette[9]
- Daniel Coit Gilman
- Allen Ginsberg
- Bertram G. Goodhue
- Robert Grant[8]
- William Elliot Griffis[19]
- Arthur Twining Hadley[9]
- Childe Hassam[12]
- Thomas Hastings[9]
- David Jayne Hill[12]
- Ripley Hitchcock[20]
- Cecil de Blaquiere Howard
- Julia Ward Howe
- William Henry Howe
- William Dean Howells[9]
- Archer Milton Huntington[21]
- Charles Ives
- Henry James[9]
- Robert Underwood Johnson
- Louis I. Kahn
- Kenneth Koch
- Maxine Kumin
- Sinclair Lewis
- Roy Lichtenstein
- Henry Cabot Lodge[8]
- Abbott Lawrence Lowell[8]
- Mary McCarthy
- Hamilton Wright Mabie[8]
- Archibald MacLeish
- Frederick William MacMonnies[8]
- Brander Matthews[8]
- William Keepers Maxwell Jr.[22]
- William Rutherford Mead[9]
- Gari Melchers[9]
- Willard Metcalf[23]
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
- Charles Moore[24]
- Douglas Moore
- Paul Elmer More[8]
- Robert Motherwell
- Georgia O'Keeffe
- Thomas N. Page[8]
- Horatio Parker[8]
- Joseph Pennell[25]
- Bliss Perry[8]
- William Lyon Phelps
- Charles Adams Platt[26]
- Ezra Pound
- James Ford Rhodes[9]
- James Whitcomb Riley[9]
- George Lockhart Rives[8]
- Elihu Root[12]
- Theodore Roosevelt[8]
- Mark Rothko
- Eero Saarinen
- Carl Sandburg
- John Singer Sargent[8]
- Meyer Schapiro
- Arnold Schoenberg[27]
- Harry Rowe Shelley
- Stuart Sherman[28]
- Robert E. Sherwood
- Paul Shorey[29]
- William Milligan Sloane[9]
- Wallace Stevens
- Meryl Streep[30]
- Lorado Taft[31]
- Josef Tal[32]
- Booth Tarkington[12]
- Abbott Handerson Thayer[12]
- William Roscoe Thayer[9]
- Augustus Thomas[9]
- Virgil Thomson
- Lionel Trilling
- Henry van Dyke[8]
- John Charles Van Dyke
- Elihu Vedder[12]
- Kurt Vonnegut[33]
- Julian Alden Weir[9]
- Barrett Wendell[12]
- Edith Wharton
- Andrew Dickson White[8]
- Thornton Wilder
- Brand Whitlock[12]
- William Carlos Williams
- Woodrow Wilson[12]
- Owen Wister[8]
- George Edward Woodberry[8]
- Frank Lloyd Wright
- James A. Wright
American Academy Of Arts And Letters Media
The bronze entrance doors to the administration building on West 155th Street were designed by Academy member Adolph Alexander Weinman and are dedicated to the memory of Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman and to the women writers of the United States.
References
- Notes
- ↑ "The American Academy Of Arts And Letters Announces The Opening Of The Charles Ives Studio". American Academy of Arts and Letters. Archived from the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved March 31, 2015.
- ↑ John Updike, ed. A Century of Arts & Letters, Columbia University Press (1998), p. 263.
- ↑ Barbara S. Christen and Steven Flanders, eds. Cass Gilbert, Life and Work: Architect of the Public Domain, W. W. Norton and Company (2001), p. 12.
- ↑ "Rival to the Great French Academy Limited to 50 Members, Receives Official Recognition From the U.S. Senate; Something About Those on the Original List", The New York Times. January 26, 1913.
- ↑ "Immortals' Plan Hall of Fame Here; Women Would Be Eligible- But "Better Form a Hall of Their Own", The New York Times. November 16, 1913.
- ↑ First woman elected to American Academy of Arts and Letters, Jan. 28, 1908.
- ↑ The history of the National Institute of Arts & Letters and the American Academy of Arts & Letters as Told, Decade by Decade, by Eleven Members: Louis Auchincloss, Jack Beeson, Hortense Calisher, Ada Louise Huxtable, Wolf Kahn, R. W. B. Lewis, Richard Lippold, Norman Mailer, Cynthia Ozick, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.- John Updike, Editor, Columbia University Press, New York, 1998.
- ↑ 8.00 8.01 8.02 8.03 8.04 8.05 8.06 8.07 8.08 8.09 8.10 8.11 8.12 8.13 8.14 8.15 8.16 8.17 8.18 8.19 8.20 8.21 8.22 8.23 "Academicians Meet Here This Week; Members of Institute Will Join Them in Sessions at the Ritz-Carlton. France to send Greeting; Concert Wherein All Works Are by American Composers Will Be Heard", The New York Times. November 12, 1916.
- ↑ 9.00 9.01 9.02 9.03 9.04 9.05 9.06 9.07 9.08 9.09 9.10 9.11 9.12 9.13 9.14 9.15 9.16 9.17 9.18 9.19 9.20 9.21 "Two New Members for the Academy; Dr. Barrett Wendell and Garl Melchers, the Painter, Honored at Meeting", The New York Times. November 16, 1916.
- ↑ American Academy of Arts and Letters: Deceased Members Archived July 26, 2011, at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved January 5, 2010.
- ↑ "W. R. Thayer Wins Medal; J.G. Huneker and Others Elected to Arts and Letters Institute.
- ↑ 12.00 12.01 12.02 12.03 12.04 12.05 12.06 12.07 12.08 12.09 12.10 "Academy Honors John Burroughs; Naturalist Praised by Bliss Perry and Hamlin Garland at Memorial Meeting", The New York Times, November 19, 1921.
- ↑ "Hortense Calisher | Jewish Women's Archive". Jwa.org. Retrieved November 16, 2016.
- ↑ Associated, The (December 10, 1987). "Arts Academy Elects Dickey and Styron". The New York Times. Retrieved November 16, 2016.
- ↑ "Bob Dylan not coming to Stockholm to accept Nobel Prize for literature". The Plain Dealer. November 16, 2016. Retrieved November 16, 2016.
- ↑ The Los Angeles Times, May 30, 1943, p. 49.
- ↑ "William Gaddis". Albany.edu. Retrieved November 16, 2016.
- ↑ "Elected to Academy; Brand Whitlock and Hamlin Garland in Arts and Letters", The New York Times. January 12, 1918.
- ↑ "Dr. Griffis, Friend of Japan, Dies; Educator Who Helped Japanese Adapt Themselves to Western Civilization", The New York Times. February 6, 1928.
- ↑ Wertheim, Stanley (1997). A Stephen Crane Encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 155. ISBN 978-0-313-29692-5.
- ↑ "Huntington Gives Site for Academy; Men of Arts and Letters to Erect Building Near Riverside Drive and 155th St. Next to Hispanic Museum; National Institute and American Academy Accept Offer of Eight City Lots for Site", The New York Times. January 25, 1915.
- ↑ Pg. 19
- ↑ "American Academy of Arts and Letters - Deceased Members". Archived from the original on July 26, 2011. Retrieved July 30, 2011.
- ↑ Caemmerer, H. Paul. "Charles Moore and the Plan of Washington." Records of the Columbia Historical Society. Vol. 46/47 (1944/1945): 237–258, 254.
- ↑ Joseph Pennell, Noted Artist, Dead; Won High Honors as Etcher and Illustrator — Later Taught Art and Wrote Books", The New York Times. April 24, 1926.
- ↑ "Academy Elects Gay and Lippman; Artist and Journalist Named to Vacancies Left by Deaths of Platt and Shorey", The New York Times. November 9, 1934.
- ↑ Schoenberg, Arnold (1987). Stern, Erwin (ed.). Arnold Schoenberg Letters. University of California Press. p. 244. ISBN 978-0-520-06009-8.
- ↑ "First Women Elected to Institute of Arts; Edith Wharton Among the Four Chosen — American Academy Makes Two Men Members", The New York Times. November 12, 1926.
- ↑ "Would Encourage Study of Classics; Academy of Arts and Letters Suggests Courses for Schools and Colleges; Sees Aid to Civilization; Resolution Says Opposite Policy Would Lower the Culture of the American People", The New York Times. December 16, 1918.
- ↑ "Streep would like to thank the (arts) academy" "DesMoines Register." April 12, 2010.
- ↑ "Mr. Lorado Taft Dies; Leading Sculptor; Creator of Some of Country's Outstanding Monuments is Stricken at 76; Was Teacher in Chicago; Fountain of Time and Columbus Memorial in Washington Among Chief Works", The New York Times. October 31, 1936.
- ↑ "American Academy of Arts and Letters — Deceased Members". Artsandletters.org. Archived from the original on July 26, 2011. Retrieved August 13, 2012.
- ↑ "American Academy of Arts and Letters — Deceased Members". Artsandletters.org. Archived from the original on July 26, 2011. Retrieved August 13, 2012.
- Sources
- Richard Warrington Baldwin Lewis; Michael G. Kort (1998). A Century of Arts & Letters: The History of the National Institute of Arts & Letters and the American Academy of Arts & Letters as Told, Decade by Decade, by Eleven Members. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-10248-3.
Other websites
- American Academy of Arts & Letters — official website
- Cornell Legal Institute: Title 36 > Subtitle II > Part B > Chapter 203 > § 20301 et seq. — easiest to read
- United States House of Representatives: "36 USC Chapter 203". Archived from the original on November 1, 2007.
- United States Government Publishing Office (GPO): "US Code, Title 36, Chapter 203". Archived from the original on November 1, 2007. — revised §4701 et seq. (1916–1998)
- American Academy of Arts and Letters records, 1864–1942 from the Smithsonian Archives of American Art