# Arts Club of Washington

The Arts Club of Washington is a private club to promote the Arts in Washington, D.C.
Founded by Bertha Noyes in May 1916, its first president was Henry Kirke Bush-Brown; Mathilde Mueden Leisenring was among its original members, as were Susan Brown Chase, Catharine Carter Critcher, Lola Sleeth Miller, Bertha E. Perrie, and Mary Gine Riley.
It is located at the Cleveland Abbe House. Since 2006, the Club has awarded the Marfield Prize, also known as the National Award for Arts Writing, for nonfiction books about the arts written for a broad audience.

## Programs

The club supports visual, performing, and literary arts in Washington, D.C. It hosts a noon-time concert series. It awards arts scholarships.

## The Marfield Prize, National Award for Arts Writing

The Marfield Prize, also known as the National Award for Arts Writing, is given annually by the Arts Club of Washington to nonfiction books about the arts written for a broad audience. Intended to help increase access to the arts, the Prize "celebrates prose that is lucid, luminous, clear, and inspiring—writing that creates a strong connection with arts and artists."
The Prize of $10,000, which the Club asserts is the only one of its kind in the country, honors nonfiction books first published in the U.S., by a single author who is living at the time of the book's nomination. First given in 2006, the prize's endowment was established by long-time Arts Club member Jeannie S. Marfield in honor of Florence Berryman and Helen Wharton.
The award is given to the author of a nonfiction book about any artistic discipline (visual, literary, performing, or media arts, as well as cross-disciplinary works. Works of art history and criticism, biographies and memoirs, and essays are all eligible. Anthologies, creative works of fiction or poetry, books for children, exhibition catalogs and self-published books are not eligible.
Members of the club noticed that there was a lack of "good, accessible writing about the arts," according to former award administrator Sarah Browning. Club members decided to use a bequest by longtime member Jeannie S. Marfield to remedy the situation. In addition to the annual winners, the Club publishes the names of several finalists.

## List of winners

| Year awarded | Winner | Title | Publisher | Published year |
| 2020 | Maggie Doherty | The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s | Knopf |
| 2019 | Andrew McConnell Stott | What Blest Genius?: The Jubilee That Made Shakespeare | W. W. Norton & Company |
| 2018 | Wendy Lesser | You say to brick: the life of Louis Kahn | Farrar, Straus and Girou | 2017 |
| 2017 | Rachel Corbett | You Must Change Your Life | W. W. Norton | 2016 |
| 2016 | Michael Riedel | Razzle Dazzle: The Battle for Broadway | Simon & Schuster | 2015 |
| 2015 | Philip Gefter | Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe | Liveright | 2014 |
| 2014 | Sherill Tippins | Inside the Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York's Legendary Chelsea Hotel | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | 2013 |
| 2013 | Anne-Marie O'Connor | The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer | Knopf | 2012 |
| 2012 | Yael Tamar Lewin | Night's Dancer: The Life of Janet Collins | Wesleyan University Press | 2011 |
| 2011 | R. Tripp Evans | Grant Wood: A Life | Knopf | 2010 |
| 2010 | Linda Gordon | Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits | W. W. Norton & Co. | 2009 |
| 2009 | Michael Sragow | Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master | Pantheon Books | 2008 |
| 2008 | Brenda Wineapple | White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson | Knopf | 2008 |
| 2008 | Jenny Uglow | Nature's Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick | Farrar, Straus & Giroux | 2007 |
| 2007 | Scott Reynolds Nelson | Steel Drivin' Man—John Henry: The Untold Story | Oxford University Press | 2006 |