Announcements

The American Academy of Arts and Letters announced today the ten artists who will receive its 2018 awards in art.

Gun & Powder and KPOP have won the 2018 Richard Rodgers Awards for Musical Theater.

Thomas Pynchon is awarded the inaugural Christopher Lightfoot Walker Award, which recognizes a writer of distinction who has made a significant contribution to American literature.

The American Academy of Arts and Letters announced today the names of 15 writers who will receive its 2018 awards in literature. This year’s literature prizes, totaling $185,000, honor both established and emerging writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

The American Academy of Arts and Letters announced today the eighteen recipients of this year’s awards in music, which total $225,000.

Five artists, eight writers, and three composers elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The induction ceremony will be held in May 2018.

Architect Billie Tsien was elected president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Ms. Tsien, who was inducted into the Academy in 2007, will serve a three-year term from January 2018 to January 2021.

On Sunday, March 18, 2018, at 3 p.m., Ensemble Échappé will play contemporary classical works by the winners of the 2017 Arts and Letters Awards in Music in the Academy’s Library. A reception will then follow in the galleries where the 2018 Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts, with works by 35 contemporary artists, will be on view.

The $40,000 award, endowed by the Virgil Thomson Foundation and administered by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, recognizes an American composer of vocal works.

Huck Hodge has won the Charles Ives Living Award and will receive $200,000 over a two-year period beginning in July 2018.

The American Academy of Arts and Letters has awarded its 2017 Presidential Citation to Graham Johnson, a music teacher at Washington Heights Expeditionary Learning School (WHEELS) in Manhattan.

Cody Upton has been appointed Executive Director of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, beginning July 1, 2017. He will succeed Virginia Dajani, who is retiring after 27 years. Upton will be the fifth Executive Director in the Academy’s 119-year history.