Established in 1898, the American Academy of Arts and Letters has nurtured and promoted the arts and artists for more than 125 years. Now the honor society has announced its plans to engage with art more deeply by keeping the doors of its Beaux Arts-style galleries in Washington Heights open to the public year-round. As of September, the newly renovated Audubon Terrace complex buildings, which have 10,000 square feet of exhibition space, will host solo exhibitions, interdisciplinary events and original commissions by contemporary artists in conversation with the venue’s historical architecture. This new curatorial program will be led by Jenny Jaskey, backed by a committee of Arts and Letters artist members that includes artists such as Mel Chin, Charles Gaines, Ann Hamilton, Joan Jonas and Amy Sillman.
The fall season will open with the first U.S. survey of conceptual artist Christine Kozlov spanning the four Arts and Letters South Building galleries. Employing an extremely minimalist aesthetic since the 1960s, Kozlov’s art has often incorporated text and documentation, focusing on processes and systems of human communication while exploring themes of individual and collective memories, perception and the impermanence of information.
The inaugural exhibition will be accompanied by a newly commissioned sound installation by Diné artist and composer Raven Chacon in the North Gallery. Chacon, a MacArthur Fellowship recipient and Pulitzer Prize winner, will unveil a site-specific installation that draws directly from the history of both the land where the Academy is located and its neocolonial architecture with a recording of bird song linked to the important book Birds of America by naturalist and painter John James Audubon. (The Audubon Terrace, where the academy is housed, was originally owned by Audubon and is now named after him).
Moving forward, springtime will bring with it an exhibition of work by photographer and filmmaker Elle Pérez, featuring their personal and documentary-style photographs that capture the complexity and nuance of human relationships and self-expression. Using a detail-oriented approach to the images and highly emphatic and poetic use of close-up frames, the artist dives into notions of gender, intimacy, care and desire. Also in the spring, the Arts and Letters will present a solo show by Mandan/Hidatsa painter Teresa Baker that follows her exhibition at the Hammer Museum last November. Often incorporating natural elements such as wool, felt and other textiles into her abstraction, Baker creates powerful statements on cultural identity and resistance by blending traditional Native American crafting techniques with contemporary art practices.
“A spirit of artistic collaboration across disciplines runs throughout everything we are planning, and I hope the public will feel that,” Jaskey, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ chief curator, told Observer. “We want to share the many ways of being an artist, whether that is making photographs, music, conceptual art or poetry. Our buildings offer contemporary artists a rare opportunity to work within neoclassical architecture… We hope to give artists space and time to experiment.”
A history of the American Academy of Arts and Letters
First known as the National Institute of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Letters was founded in 1898 for the “advancement of art and literature” and had its first official meeting in February of 1899. In 1904, the National Institute created the American Academy with a prestigious inner body of fifty members modeled on the Académie Française, with a bicameral membership system that required election by the Institute before joining the Academy. The system became more flexible in 1993 when the Institute dissolved and all 250 members were incorporated into the Arts and Letters. In 2020, the group voted to modify the organization’s Charter and Bylaws to increase the membership from 250, the number it had maintained since 1908, to 300. Notable members have included author John Updike, historian Robert Caro, sculptor Mark di Suvero and artists Faith Ringgold and Ed Ruscha.
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The Academy has been located in Washington Heights since 1923 thanks to the generous support of writer, historian and member Archer M. Huntington, who played a key role in the development of the Audubon Terrace cultural complex. The first Beaux-Arts building, which was designed by member William Mitchell Kendall of the architecture firm McKim, Mead, & White to house the library, members’ room, galleries and staff offices, was completed that year. A second building, designed by member Cass Gilbert and featuring a 730-seat auditorium and a skylit exhibition gallery, was added in 1930. In 2005, Arts and Letters purchased the neighboring building that once housed the headquarters of the American Numismatic Society. This latest addition hosts a permanent exhibition of the studio of Modernist composer Charles Ives, with a series of ephemera and documents donated by his grandson in 2021.