The National Academy of Design, in New York City, now called simply, The National Academy, is an honorary association of American artists, with a museum and a school of fine arts. It was founded in 1825 by Samuel F. B. Morse, Asher B. Durand, Thomas Cole, and others “to promote the fine arts in America through instruction and exhibition”. The academy houses a public collection of over five thousand works of nineteenth and twentieth century American art. It has had several homes over the years. Notably among them, in a building built during 1863-1865, of Gothic Revival style that was modeled on the Doge's Palace in Venice. Since 1942 the academy has occupied a mansion that was the former home of sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington and Archer Milton Huntington at Fifth Avenue and Eighty-ninth Street.
The school offers studio instruction, master classes, intensive critiques, various workshops, and lunchtime lectures. Scholarships are available.
Members of the National Academy of Design
Members of the National Academy are denoted by "N. A.", and one cannot apply for membership. Some of the better-known members of the Academy have included:
- Tore Asplund
- Jake Berthot
- Edwin Blashfield
- Lee Bontecou
- Vija Celmins
- William Merritt Chase
- Frederic Edwin Church
- Chuck Close
- Charles Harold Davis
- Thomas Eakins
- Lydia Field Emmet
- Helen Frankenthaler
- Daniel Chester French
- Frank Gehry
- Arthur Hill Gilbert
- Red Grooms
- Armin Hansen
- Edward Lamson Henry
- Benjamin Ivey
- Jasper Johns
- Charles Keck
- Ellsworth Kelly
- Emanuel Leutze
- Sol Lewitt
- Maya Lin
- Evelyn Beatrice Longman
- Frederick William Macmonnies
- Brice Marden
- Knox Martin
- Jervis McEntee
- Gari Melchers
- Henry Siddons Mowbray
- Victor Nehlig
- Tom Otterness
- William Page
- Philip Pearlstein
- William Lamb Picknell
- Alexander Phimister Proctor
- Robert Rauschenberg
- Dorothea Rockburne
- Robert Ryman
- Augustus Saint-Gaudens
- Richard Serra
- Nancy Spero
- T. C. Steele
- Frank Stella
- Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait
- Henry Ossawa Tanner
- Louis Comfort Tiffany
- John Trumbull
- Cy Twombly
- Calvert Vaux
- Robert Vonnoh
- John Quincy Adams Ward
- Stow Wengenroth
- Milford Zornes
