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 Benet
William Rose Benet
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 > SS 20301 et seq. -- easiest to read
United States House of Representatives:
United States Government Publishing Office (GPO): -- revised SS4701 et seq. (1916-1998)
American Academy of Arts and Letters records, 1864-1942 from the Smithsonian Archives of American Art
Manhattan
1904 establishments
American writers' organizations
Museums in New York City
Organizations in New York City