On Tuesday, February 21, Michael Maltzan was one of 19 new members announced for induction this spring into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He will join a wide range of writers, musicians, architects, performing artists and visual artists in the academy, along with honorary inductees Francis Ford Coppola and Frances McDormand, and two foreign honorary artists: Chilean poet Cecilia Vicuña and Andrey Kurkov, the Ukrainian novelist and prominent critic of the Russian invasion. The new members and four honorary members will be inducted into the Academy during its annual Ceremonial on May 24, 2023. During the ceremony, the Ukrainian writer Andrey Kurkov, who is being inducted into Foreign Honorary membership, will deliver the keynote address.
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.
The Academy’s American Honorary membership, which began in 1983, 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. Foreign Honorary membership, which was established in 1929, celebrates up to seventy-five distinguished architects, artists, writers, and composers from other countries whose work the Academy’s membership greatly admires.
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.
