History of the National Academy

The National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts is tri-partite institution. It is an honorary association of American artists with a museum and a school of fine arts. Founded in 1825 as the National Academy of Design by such leading artists as Samuel F. B. Morse, Asher B. Durand, and Thomas Cole to "promote the fine arts in America through instruction and exhibition". The Academy continues to play a critical role in preserving and fostering the visual arts in America. Through a program of exceptional exhibitions in the Museum and quality instruction in the School of Fine Arts, the Academy serves as a link to the art of our past, and a bridge to the art of our present, and future.

The Academicians of the National Academy are professional artists who are elected to membership by their peers. Members both past and present include many of the country's leading painters, sculptors, architects, and printmakers. Notable among them are Albert Bierstadt, Louis Bourgeois, Frederic E. Church, Chuck Close, Richard Diebenkorn, Thomas Eakins, Helen Frankenthaler, Frank Gehry, Horatio Greenough, Charles Gwathmey, Winslow Homer, Jasper Johns, Maya Lin, Tom Otterness, I. M. Pei, Robert Rauschenberg, Dorothea Rockburne, John Singer Sargent, Wayne Theibaud, Frank Lloyd Wright and Andrew Wyeth.

The Academy houses one of the largest public American art collections in the country containing works from the nineteenth century to the present. Comprised of over seven thousand works in almost every artistic style the collection includes portraiture from the Federal period, naturalistic landscapes of the Hudson River School, and the studies of light and atmosphere that inform Tonalism and American Impressionism. The modernist movements are also represented such as Fauvism, the Ashcan artists, American Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Photorealism, and the Decorative Movement. Masterworks in these and other styles have come into the Academy's collection mainly as gifts from newly elected National Academicians in compliance with membership requirements; thereby continually enriching the collection.

The fundamental mission of the Academy has never changed-the annual exhibitions have been held every year since 1826; the School of Fine Arts has functioned almost without interruption since that date; and, in recognition of the ever-changing character of American art, over 2,000 artists have been honored with election.