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.

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