American Academy of Arts and Letters


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. 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 were called the "Academy", and the larger group was called the "Institute". This strict two-tiered system persisted for 72 years.
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, 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

The academy occupies three buildings on the west end of the Audubon Terrace complex created by Archer M. Huntington, the heir to the Southern Pacific Railroad fortune and a noted philanthropist. To help convince the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, which were separate but related organizations at the time, to move to the complex, Huntington established building funds and endowments for both.
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. On the north side, another building housing an auditorium and gallery was designed by Cass Gilbert, also an academy member, and built in 1928–1930. These additions to the complex necessitated considerable alterations to the Audubon Terrace plaza, which were designed by McKim, Mead & White.
In 2007, the American Numismatic Society, which had occupied a Charles P. Huntington-designed building immediately to the east of the academy's original building, vacated that space to move to smaller quarters downtown. This building, which incorporates a 1929 addition designed by H. Brooks Price, became the academy's Annex and houses additional gallery space. In 2009, the space between the Annex and the administration building was turned into a new entrance link, designed by Vincent Czajka with Pei Cobb Freed & Partners.

Membership

Members of the academy are chosen for life and have included some of the American art scene's leading figures. They are organized into committees that award annual prizes to up-and-coming artists. 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. 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 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: