National Arts Club

National Arts Club
Name	National Arts Club
Formation	1898
Type	Nonprofit arts organization
Headquarters	Gramercy Park, Manhattan, New York City
Leader title	President

National Arts Club

The National Arts Club is a private arts organization and cultural institution founded in 1898 and housed in a landmarked mansion in Gramercy Park, Manhattan. It promotes public appreciation of visual arts, architecture, literature, music, theater and design through exhibitions, lectures, residencies and awards while maintaining a membership of artists, patrons and professionals. The Club has links to prominent figures and institutions across American and international cultural life, and its programs intersect with museums, universities, conservatories, foundations and galleries.

History

Founded in 1898 by a group includingJ. Pierpont Morgan, Charles F. McKim, Stanford White, William Merritt Chase and E. H. Harriman, the Club emerged during the American Gilded Age and Progressive Era debates about patronage, civic institutions and urban culture. Early activities connected the Club to exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, collaborations with the Art Students League of New York and exchanges with European salons associated with Émile Zola, John Ruskin, James McNeill Whistler and Auguste Rodin. Throughout the 20th century the Club hosted lectures by figures linked to movements such as Impressionism, Modernism, Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism and engaged with patrons like Andrew Carnegie and Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney. During the Great Depression and New Deal era the Club intersected with initiatives related to the Works Progress Administration and artists connected to the Whitney Studio Club. In the postwar period it engaged with institutions including Museum of Modern Art, Carnegie Hall, Columbia University and the New York Public Library. The Club’s history reflects interactions with civic debates involving preservationists like Phoebe Apperson Hearst and commissions related to the Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Architecture and Facilities

The Club is housed in the Samuel J. Tilden House, a Romanesque Revival brownstone designed by H. H. Richardson-influenced architects and once occupied by political figure Samuel J. Tilden. The mansion sits on Gramercy Park adjacent to landmarks and residences associated with Edwin Booth, Franklin Roosevelt, Walt Whitman and the Gramercy Park Hotel. Architectural features include carved stonework, stained glass by studios linked to Louis Comfort Tiffany, frescoes referencing motifs seen in the work of John La Farge and ornamental ironwork similar to pieces by Samuel Yellin. Facilities encompass exhibition galleries used for shows comparable to those mounted at Gagosian Gallery, a library and reading room with collections paralleling holdings at Cooper Union and specialized spaces for lectures and chamber music performances akin to programming at 92nd Street Y and Carnegie Hall.

Membership and Organization

Membership has included practicing artists, critics, curators, collectors and patrons historically connected to institutions like Pratt Institute, Rhode Island School of Design, Yale School of Art, Columbia University School of the Arts and New York University. The Club operates through elected officers, committees and an administrative staff, with governance practices similar to those of the Metropolitan Opera board and nonprofit cultural organizations such as the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the American Academy in Rome. Membership categories and election procedures echo procedures used by societies such as the Century Association and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The Club has awarded medals and prizes associated in provenance with awards like the Pulitzer Prize and the National Medal of Arts through juried committees composed of figures drawn from museums, galleries and academic departments including Harvard University and Yale University.

Programs and Events

Programming encompasses exhibitions, juried shows, artist talks, concerts, readings, symposia and educational workshops coordinated with curators, conservators and scholars affiliated with Smithsonian Institution, National Gallery of Art, Frick Collection, Whitney Museum of American Art and university museums. The Club has hosted lecture series featuring voices from theater and film linked to Lincoln Center, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, playwrights associated with Eugene O'Neill and composers connected to Aaron Copland. Musical programming ranges from chamber recitals in the tradition of performers tied to Juilliard and New England Conservatory to contemporary series akin to commissions supported by the Rockefeller Foundation and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Special events have included juried competitions that parallel the structure of the Armory Show and cataloged exhibitions documented in archives similar to those at the Archives of American Art.

Notable Members and Artists

Across its history the Club’s membership and visiting artists include painters, sculptors, architects, writers, musicians and actors associated with personalities and institutions such as John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, Winslow Homer, Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Louise Nevelson, Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson, Edmund Wilson, T. S. Eliot, Eudora Welty, Aaron Copland, Igor Stravinsky, Ralph Ellison, Arthur Miller, Maya Angelou, Alfred Stieglitz, Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, Robert Mapplethorpe, Andy Warhol, Celia Paul, Leonard Bernstein, Marian Anderson, Helen Frankenthaler, Jasper Johns, Barnett Newman, Isamu Noguchi, Augusta Savage, Betye Saar, Faith Ringgold, Louise Bourgeois, Helen Hayes, Ethel Barrymore, Vivian Beaumont and curators linked to Harvard Art Museums and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Collections and Archives

The Club maintains archives, exhibition catalogs, correspondence and image collections documenting programs and member activities comparable in scope to institutional holdings at the Archives of American Art, New York Public Library, Getty Research Institute and university special collections such as those at Columbia University and Yale University. Holdings include artists’ letters, photographers’ prints, architectural drawings and program ephemera with provenance related to collectors and donors similar to Henry Clay Frick, Samuel Putnam Avery and Albert C. Barnes. The Club’s archival materials support research by scholars associated with journals and presses like The Art Bulletin, October (journal), Phaidon Press and university presses at Princeton University and Oxford University Press.

Category:Arts organizations in New York City