thumb|Audubon Terrace in [[Manhattan in April 2008]]

The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 300-member honor society whose goal is to "foster, assist, and sustain excellence" in American literature, music, and art. Its fixed number membership is elected for lifetime appointments. Its headquarters is in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It shares Audubon Terrace, a Beaux Arts/American Renaissance complex 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 on a published schedule. Exhibits include an annual exhibition of paintings, sculptures, photographs and works on paper by contemporary artists nominated by its members, and an annual exhibition of works by newly elected members and recipients of honors and awards. A permanent exhibit of the recreated studio of composer Charles Ives was opened in 2014.

The auditorium is sought out by musicians and engineers wishing to record live, as the acoustics are considered among the city's finest. Hundreds of commercial recordings have been made there.

History

Early years

The American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters was formed from three parent organizations. The first, the American Social Science Association, was founded in 1865 in Boston. The second was the National Institute of Arts and Letters, which ASSA's membership created in 1898. The qualification for membership in the NIAL was notable achievement in art, music, or literature. The NIAL's membership was at first limited to 150 (all men). The third organization was the American Academy of Arts, which NIAL's membership created in 1904 as a preeminent national arts institution, styling itself after the French Academy.

The AAA's first seven academicians were elected from ballots cast by the NIAL membership. They were William Dean Howells, Samuel L. Clemens, Edmund Clarence Stedman, and John Hay, representing literature; Augustus Saint-Gaudens and John La Farge, representing art; and Edward MacDowell, representing music. The NIAL membership increased in 1904, with the introduction of a two-tiered structure: 50 academicians and 200 regular members. Academicians were gradually elected over the next several years. The elite group (academicians) were called the "Academy", and the larger group (regular members) was called the "Institute". This strict two-tiered system persisted for 72 years (1904–1976).

In 1908, the poet Julia Ward Howe was elected to the AAA, becoming the first female academician.

In 1976, the NIAL and AAA merged, under the name American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. The combined Academy/Institute structure had a maximum of 250 living U.S. citizens as members, plus up to 75 foreign composers, artists, and writers as honorary members. It also established the annual Witter Bynner Poetry Prize in 1980 to support young poets. The election of foreign honorary members persisted until 1993, when it was abandoned.

Federally chartered corporation

The academy holds a Congressional charter under Title 36 of the United States Code (42 USC 20301 et seq.), making it one of the country's comparatively rare "Title 36" corporations. The 1916 statute of incorporation established this institution among a small number of other similarly chartered patriotic and national organizations. The federal incorporation was originally construed primarily as an honor. The special recognition neither implies nor accords Congress any special control over the academy, which functions independently.

Active sponsors of Congressional action were Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts and former President Theodore Roosevelt. The process that led to the creation of this federal charter was controversial and the first attempt to gain the charter in 1910 failed. Lodge reintroduced legislation, which passed the Senate in 1913. The academy was incorporated under the laws of the State of New York in 1914, which resulted in Congressional approval in 1916.

Buildings

thumb|right|250px|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.

The first building, on the complex's south side, along West 155th Street, was designed by William M. Kendall of McKim, Mead & White; Kendall was also a member of the academy. This Anglo-Italian Renaissance administration building was designed in 1921 and opened in 1923. Although the names of some of the organization's members may not be well-known today, each was well known in their time. Greatness and pettiness are demonstrable among the academy members, even during the first decade, when William James declined his nomination on the grounds that his little brother Henry had been elected first. One of the giants of the academy in his time, Robert Underwood Johnson, casts a decades-long shadow in his one-man war against encroaching modernism, blackballing such writers as H. L. Mencken, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and T. S. Eliot (before his emigration to England disqualified him for full membership). Former Harvard president Charles William Eliot declined election to the academy "because he was already in so many societies that he didn't want to add to the number".

Although never explicitly excluded, women were not elected to membership in the early years. The admission of Julia Ward Howe in January 1908 (at age 88) as the first woman in the academy was only one incident in the intense debate about the consideration of female members. In 1926, the election of four women—Edith Wharton, Margaret Deland, Agnes Repplier and Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman—was said to have "marked the letting down of the bars to women". The first African-American woman member-elect was Gwendolyn Brooks in 1976.

Below is a partial list of past members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and its successor institution, the National Institute and Academy of Arts and Letters:

  • Henry Brooks Adams
  • Herbert Adams
  • Henry Mills Alden
  • Wystan Hugh Auden
  • Paul Wayland Bartlett
  • Stephen Vincent Benét
  • William Rose Benét
  • Edwin Howland Blashfield
  • William S. Burroughs
  • Nicholas Murray Butler
  • Joseph Campbell
  • George Whitefield Chadwick
  • Kenyon Cox
  • Thomas Harlan Ellett
  • Stanley Elkin
  • Duke Ellington
  • Ralph Ellison
  • Daniel Chester French
  • Hamlin Garland
  • Charles Dana Gibson
  • Arthur Twining Hadley
  • Cecil de Blaquiere Howard
  • Julia Ward Howe
  • William Henry Howe
  • William Dean Howells
  • Charles Ives
  • Henry James
  • William Rutherford Mead
  • Edna St. Vincent Millay
  • Charles Moore
  • Douglas Moore
  • Paul Elmer More
  • Bliss Perry
  • Ezra Pound
  • James Ford Rhodes
  • Harry Rowe Shelley
  • Stuart Sherman
  • William Milligan Sloane
  • Lorado Taft
  • Josef Tal
  • Booth Tarkington
  • Julian Alden Weir
  • 2008: Judith Jamison

Other awards

The academy gives out numerous awards, with recipients chosen by committees of academy members. Candidates for awards must be nominated by Academy members, except for the Richard Rodgers awards, for which an application may be submitted.

  • Arts and Letters Award (formerly, the Academy Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters): In 1941, the academy established awards to encourage creative work in the arts. Now $10,000 each, Academy Awards are given annually: five to artists, eight to writers, four to composers, and three to architects.
  • Marc Blitzstein Award: The $5,000 award is given periodically to a composer, lyricist, or librettist, "to encourage the creation of works of merit for musical theater and opera". The award was established in 1965 by the friends of Marc Blitzstein, an academy member.
  • Michael Braude Award for Light Verse: The $5,000 biennial award is given "for light verse written in English regardless of the country of origin of the writer".
  • Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize: The annual prize of $5,000 goes to an architect of any nationality who has "made a contribution to architecture as an art".
  • Benjamin H. Danks Award: The $20,000 award is given in rotation to a composer of ensemble works, a playwright, and a writer (fiction, nonfiction, poetry). Since 2002, the academy has administered the prize established by Roy Lyndon Danks in honor of his father, Benjamin Hadley Danks.
  • Jimmy Ernst Award: Established by Dallas Ernst in memory of her husband, the Jimmy Ernst Award of $5,000 is given to a painter or sculptor "whose lifetime contribution to his or her vision has been both consistent and dedicated". The award has been presented annually since 1990.
  • Rome Prize in Literature: Every year the academy selects and partly subsidizes two young writers for a one-year residence at the American Academy in Rome.
  • Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Awards: Each of these two awards are for $5,000. The first, established in 1956, is for a fiction work of "considerable literary achievement" published in the previous year. The second, created in 1959, is for a young painter "who has not yet been accorded due recognition".
  • Medal for Spoken Language: This medal, awarded from time to time, recognizes individuals who set a standard of excellence in the use of spoken language.
  • The Mildred and Harold Strauss Livings: These Livings provide an annual stipend of $50,000 a year for five years, awarded to two writers of English prose literature to enable them to devote their time exclusively to writing.
  • Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award: This $10,000 award is given each year to honor a writer of "recent prose that merits recognition for the quality of its style".
  • Morton Dauwen Zabel Award: This $10,000 biennial award is given in rotation to a poet, writer of fiction, or critic, "of progressive, original, and experimental tendencies".
  • Thornton Wilder Prize

References

;Notes

;Sources

  • Lewis, Richard W. B. (1998). "1898–1907: The Founder's Story", in A Century of Arts & Letters (John Updike, ed.). New York: Columbia University Press. (cloth)
  • 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
  • United States Government Publishing Office (GPO): US Code, Title 36, Chapter 203 — revised §4701 et seq. (1916–1998)
  • American Academy of Arts and Letters records, 1864–1942 from the Smithsonian Archives of American Art