Formation | 1863 |
---|---|
Type | Honorary organization, museum, and school |
Purpose | To promote the fine arts in America through instruction and exhibition |
Headquarters | Manhattan, New York City, U.S. |
Location |
|
Coordinates | 40°44′15.7″N73°59′12.3″W / 40.737694°N 73.986750°W |
President | Wendy Evans Joseph |
Website | www |
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fine arts in America through instruction and exhibition." [1] Membership is limited to 450 American artists and architects, who are elected by their peers on the basis of recognized excellence.
The original founders of the National Academy of Design were students of the American Academy of the Fine Arts. However, by 1825 the students of the American Academy felt a lack of support for teaching from the academy, its board composed of merchants, lawyers, and physicians, and from its unsympathetic president, the painter John Trumbull.
Samuel Morse and other students set about forming a drawing association to meet several times each week for the study of the art of design. Still, the association was viewed as a dependent organization of the American Academy, from which they felt neglected. An attempt was made to reconcile differences and maintain a single academy by appointing six of the artists from the association as directors of the American Academy. When four of the nominees were not elected, however, the frustrated artists resolved to form a new academy and the National Academy of Design was born. [2]
Morse had been a student at the Royal Academy in London and emulated its structure and goals for the National Academy of Design. The mission of the academy, from its foundation, was to "promote the fine arts in America through exhibition and education." [3]
In 2015, the academy struggled with financial hardship. In the next few years, it closed its museum and art school, and created an endowment through the sale of its New York real estate holdings. [4] Today, the academy advocates for the arts as a tool for education, celebrates the role of artists and architects in public life, and serves as a catalyst for cultural conversations that propel society forward. [5]
According to the academy, its 450 National Academicians "are professional artists and architects who are elected to membership by their peers annually." [6]
After three years and some tentative names, in 1828 the academy found its longstanding name "National Academy of Design", under which it was known to one and a half centuries. In 1997, newly appointed director Annette Blaugrund rebranded the institution as the "National Academy Museum and School of Fine Art", to reflect "a new spirit of integration incorporating the association of artists, museum, and school", and to avoid confusion with the now differently understood term "design". [7] This change was reversed in 2017. [3]
The academy occupied several locations in Manhattan over the years. Notable among them was a building on Park Avenue and 23rd Street designed by architect P. B. Wight and built 1863–1865 in a Venetian Gothic style modeled on the Doge's Palace in Venice. Another location was at West 109th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. [8] From 1906 to 1941, the academy occupied the American Fine Arts Society building at 215 West 57th Street. [9]
From 1942 to 2019, the academy occupied a mansion at 1083 Fifth Avenue, near 89th Street; [10] it had been the home of sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington and philanthropist Archer M. Huntington, who donated the house in 1940. [11]
The National Academy of Design shared offices and galleries with the National Arts Club located inside the historic Samuel J. Tilden House, 14-15 Gramercy Park South from 2019 until 2023.
Currently the home of the National Academy of Design is at 519 West 26th Street, 2nd Floor with offices as well as meeting, event and exhibition space.
The academy is a professional honorary organization, with a school and a museum.
One cannot apply for membership, which since 1994, after many changes in numbers, is limited to 450 American artists and architects. Instead, members are elected by their peers on the basis of recognized excellence. Full members of the National Academy are identified by the post-nominal "NA" (National Academician), associates by "ANA". [12]
At the heart of the National Academy is their ever-growing collection. Academicians choose and contribute a work of their own creation, building upon the academy's distinguished legacy. Today, their permanent collection totals over 8,000 works and tells a singular history of American art and architecture as constructed by its creators. The academy organizes major exhibitions and loans their works to leading institutions around the world, in addition to providing resources that foster scholarship across disciplines.
Among the teaching staff were numerous artists, including Will Hicok Low, who taught from 1889 to 1892. Another was Charles Louis Hinton, whose long tenure started in 1901. The famous American poet William Cullen Bryant also gave lectures. Architect Alexander Jackson Davis taught at the academy. Painter Lemuel Wilmarth was the first full-time instructor. [13] Silas Dustin was a curator. [14]
The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House in Piccadilly in London, England. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and appreciation of the visual arts through exhibitions, education and debate.
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.
John Callcott Horsley was a British academic painter of genre and historical scenes, illustrator, and designer of the first Christmas card. He was a member of the artist's colony in Cranbrook.
The Museum of Fine Arts is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works of art, making it one of the most comprehensive collections in the Americas. With more than 1.2 million visitors a year, it is the 79th-most-visited art museum in the world as of 2022.
Charles Allan Grafly, Jr. was an American sculptor, and teacher. Instructor of Sculpture at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for 37 years, his students included Paul Manship, Albin Polasek, and Walker Hancock.
The Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) is the country’s national academy of art. It promotes contemporary Scottish art.
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) is a museum and private art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1805 and is the first and oldest art museum and art school in the United States.
The Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art, a museum noted for its art nouveau collection, houses the most comprehensive collection of the works of Louis Comfort Tiffany found anywhere, a major collection of American art pottery, and fine collections of late-19th- and early-20th-century American paintings, graphics and the decorative arts. It is located in Winter Park, Florida.
Robert Lewis Reid was an American Impressionist painter and muralist. His work tended to be very decorative, much of it centered on depiction of young women set among flowers. He later became known for his murals and designs in stained glass.
The Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (RCA) is a Canadian arts-related organization that was founded in 1880.
The Art Students League of New York is an art school in the American Fine Arts Society in Manhattan, New York City. The Arts Students League is known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists.
The Delaware Art Museum is an art museum located on the Kentmere Parkway in Wilmington, Delaware, which holds a collection of more than 12,000 objects. The museum was founded in 1912 as the Wilmington Society of the Fine Arts in honor of the artist Howard Pyle. The collection focuses on American art and illustration from the 19th to the 21st century, and on the English Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood movement of the mid-19th century.
The California Art Club (CAC) is one of the oldest and most active arts organizations in California. Founded in December 1909, it celebrated its centennial in 2009 and into the spring of 2010. The California Art Club originally evolved out of The Painters Club of Los Angeles, a short-lived group that lasted from 1906–09. The new organization was more inclusive, as it accepted women, sculptors and out-of-state artists.
The Salmagundi Club, sometimes referred to as the Salmagundi Art Club, is a fine arts center founded in 1871 in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan, New York City. Since 1917, it has been located at 47 Fifth Avenue. As of 2021, its membership roster totaled roughly 1,250 members.
Gifford Beal was an American painter, watercolorist, printmaker and muralist.
Henry Golden Dearth was a distinguished American painter who studied in Paris and continued to spend his summers in France painting in the Normandy region. He would return to New York in winter, and became known for his moody paintings of the Long Island area. Around 1912, Dearth changed his artistic style, and began to include portrait and still life pieces as well as his paintings of rock pools created mainly in Brittany. A winner of several career medals and the Webb prize in 1893, Dearth died suddenly in 1918 aged 53 and was survived by a wife and daughter.
The American Federation of Arts (AFA) is a nonprofit organization that creates art exhibitions for presentation in museums around the world, publishes exhibition catalogues, and develops education programs. The organization’s founding in 1909 was endorsed by Theodore Roosevelt and spearheaded by Secretary of State Elihu Root and eminent art patrons and artists of the day. The AFA’s mission is to enrich the public’s experience and understanding of the visual arts, and this is accomplished through its exhibitions, catalogues, and public programs. To date, the AFA has organized or circulated approximately 3,000 exhibitions that have been viewed by more than 10 million people in museums in every state, as well as in Canada, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
George Joseph Ranalli is an American modernist architect, scholar, curator, and fellow of the American Institute of Architects. He is based in New York City.
The New Rochelle Art Association (NRAA) was founded in 1912 by artists and residents of the city of New Rochelle in Westchester County, New York. By 1912 the community had transformed into a true artists colony, home to many notable artists of the time including Frederic Remington, Alta West Salisbury, Edward Kemble, Rufus Fairchild Zogbaurn, Orson Lowell, F. Wellingon Ruckstuhl, Ernest Albert, Homer Emons, Frederick Dana Marsh, Remington Schuyler, Lucius Wolcott Hitchcock, George T. Tobin, Leon Shafer, Charles Ayer, Herman Lambden and Armand Both.
Lyme Art Association (LAA) is a nonprofit art organization established in 1914, with roots going back to 1902. The LAA maintains a historic art gallery located at 90 Lyme Street in the Old Lyme Historic District, Old Lyme, Connecticut. The gallery was built in 1921 to a design prepared by the architect and artist Charles A. Platt. The association holds exhibitions throughout the year, featuring the work of member artists as well as visiting ones, with an emphasis on representational art The building has a north-light studio, where the association conducts classes year-round.
It has always been an artist-run organization. Its exclusive, invite-only membership comprises many of the best artists in the country, and going forward it has decided to focus its resources and energy on serving them. This means promoting their achievements, helping them through grants, and producing a snappy online journal that's fresh and focused.