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.

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.

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.

Women were not elected to membership in the early years. In 1908, poet Julia Ward Howe was elected to the AAA, becoming the first female member.

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:

 Henry Brooks Adams
 Herbert Adams
 Henry Mills Alden
 Nelson Algren
 Hannah Arendt
 Newton Arvin
 Wystan Hugh Auden
 Paul Wayland Bartlett
 Chester Beach
 Stephen Vincent Benét
 William Rose Benét
 Edwin Howland Blashfield
 William Brownell
 George de Forest Brush
 John Burroughs
 William S. Burroughs
 Nicholas Murray Butler
 George Washington Cable
 Hortense Calisher
 Joseph Campbell
 George Whitefield Chadwick
 William Merritt Chase
 Chou Wen-chung
 Timothy Cole
 Kenyon Cox
 John Dos Passos
 Bob Dylan
 Thomas Harlan Ellett
 Stanley Elkin
 Duke Ellington
 Ralph Ellison
 Daniel Chester French
 William Gaddis
 Hamlin Garland
 Charles Dana Gibson
 Cass Gilbert
 Richard Watson Gilder
 Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve
 Brendan Gill
 William Gillette
 Daniel Coit Gilman
 Allen Ginsberg
 Bertram G. Goodhue
 Robert Grant
 William Elliot Griffis
 Arthur Twining Hadley
 Childe Hassam
 Thomas Hastings
 David Jayne Hill
 Ripley Hitchcock
 Cecil de Blaquiere Howard
 Julia Ward Howe
 William Henry Howe
 William Dean Howells
 Archer Milton Huntington
 Charles Ives
 Henry James
 Robert Underwood Johnson
 Louis I. Kahn
 Kenneth Koch
 Maxine Kumin
 Sinclair Lewis
 Roy Lichtenstein
 Henry Cabot Lodge
 Abbott Lawrence Lowell
 Mary McCarthy
 Hamilton Wright Mabie
 Archibald MacLeish
 Frederick William MacMonnies
 Brander Matthews
 William Keepers Maxwell Jr.
 William Rutherford Mead
 Gari Melchers
 Willard Metcalf
 Edna St. Vincent Millay
 Charles Moore
 Douglas Moore
 Paul Elmer More
 Robert Motherwell
 Georgia O'Keeffe
 Thomas N. Page
 Horatio Parker
 Joseph Pennell
 Bliss Perry
 William Lyon Phelps
 Charles Adams Platt
 Ezra Pound
 James Ford Rhodes
 James Whitcomb Riley
 George Lockhart Rives
 Elihu Root
 Theodore Roosevelt
 Mark Rothko
 Eero Saarinen
 Carl Sandburg
 John Singer Sargent
 Meyer Schapiro
 Arnold Schoenberg
 Harry Rowe Shelley
 Stuart Sherman
 Robert E. Sherwood
 Paul Shorey
 William Milligan Sloane
 Wallace Stevens
 Meryl Streep
 Lorado Taft
 Josef Tal
 Booth Tarkington
 Abbott Handerson Thayer
 William Roscoe Thayer
 Augustus Thomas
 Virgil Thomson
 Lionel Trilling
 Henry van Dyke
 John Charles Van Dyke
 Elihu Vedder
 Kurt Vonnegut
 Julian Alden Weir
 Barrett Wendell
 Edith Wharton
 Andrew Dickson White
 Thornton Wilder
 Brand Whitlock
 William Carlos Williams
 Woodrow Wilson
 Owen Wister
 George Edward Woodberry
 Frank Lloyd Wright
 James A. Wright

References 
Notes

Sources

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: 
 United States Government Publishing Office (GPO):  — revised §4701 et seq. (1916–1998)
 American Academy of Arts and Letters records, 1864–1942 from the Smithsonian Archives of American Art

Manhattan
1904 establishments
Museums in New York