2022 Newly Elected Members

NEW YORK, March 3, 2022—18 new members and three honorary members will be inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters during its annual Ceremonial on May 18, 2022.

Membership in the Academy is limited to 300 architects, visual artists, composers, and writers who are elected for life and pay no dues. New members were elected by vote of the existing membership. The honor of election is considered the highest form of recognition of artistic merit in the United States.

In addition to its regular membership, the Academy’s American Honorary membership recognizes up to twenty Americans of extraordinary artistic achievement whose work falls outside of or transcends the fields of architecture, art, literature, and music composition, while Foreign Honorary membership celebrates up to seventy-five distinguished architects, artists, writers, and composers from other countries whose work the Academy’s membership greatly admires.

 

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND LETTERS

The American Academy of Arts and Letters was founded in 1898 as an honor society of the country’s leading architects, artists, composers, and writers. Early members include William Merritt Chase, Childe Hassam, Julia Ward Howe, Henry James, Edward MacDowell, Theodore Roosevelt, Augustus Saint- Gaudens, John Singer Sargent, Mark Twain, and Edith Wharton. The Academy’s 300 members are elected for life and pay no dues.

In addition to electing new members as vacancies occur, the Academy seeks to foster and sustain an interest in Literature, Music, and the Fine Arts by administering over 70 awards and prizes totaling more than $1 million, exhibiting art and manuscripts, funding performances of new works of musical theater, purchasing artwork for donation to museums across the country, and presenting talks and concerts.

John Luther Adams – photograph by Pete Woodhead
Deborah Berke – photograph by Winnie Au
Lydia Davis – photograph by Theo Cote
Suzan Frecon – photograph by Julie Brown Harwood
Charles Gaines – photograph by Fredrik Nilsen
Terrance Hayes – photograph by Becky Thurner Braddock
Jennifer Higdon – photograph by Andrew Bogard
Kazuo Ishiguro – photograph by Lorna Ishiguro
Arthur Jafa – photograph courtesy of the artist and Gladstone
Gallery, New York and Brussels
Annea Lockwood – photograph by Julia Dratel
Joni Mitchell – photograph by Marcy Gensic
Tim O’Brien – photograph by Timmy O’Brien
Bridget Riley – photograph courtesy of the Bridget Riley Archive
David Sanford – photograph by Sabado Visconti
Elizabeth Strout – photograph by Leonardo Cendamo
Amy Tan – photograph by Kim Newmoney
Mabel O. Wilson – photograph by Dario Calmese