American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medals

Two American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medals are awarded each year by the academy for distinguished achievement. The two awards are taken in rotation from these categories:

  • Belles Lettres and Criticism, and Painting;
  • Biography and Music;
  • Fiction and Sculpture;
  • History and Architecture, including Landscape Architecture;
  • Poetry and Music;
  • Drama and Graphic Art.

The Academy voted in 1915 to establish an additional Gold Medal for "special distinction" to be given for the entire work of the recipient who is not a member of the academy. The first of these occasional lifetime achievement gold medals was awarded in the next year to former Harvard President, Charles Eliot.

Awards in individual categories are listed below (in alphabetical order) followed by a list of all prizes in reverse chronological order:

This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

Read more about American Academy Of Arts And Letters Gold Medals:  Special Distinction, Architecture, Belles Lettres, Criticism, Essays, Biography, Drama, Fiction, Novel, Short Story, Graphic Art, History, Music, Painting, Poetry, Sculpture, All Winners

Famous quotes containing the words american, academy, arts, letters and/or gold:

    The American mood, perhaps even the American character, has changed. There are few manifestations any longer of the old American self-assurance which so irritated Dickens.... Instead, there is a sense of frustration so perceptible that even our politicians ... have attempted to exploit it.
    Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982)

    The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created.
    bell hooks (b. c. 1955)

    The textile and needlework arts of the world, primarily because they have been the work of women have been especially written out of art history. It is a male idea that to be “high” and “fine” both women and art should be beautiful, but not useful or functional.
    Patricia Mainardi (b. 1942)

    When griefs are genuine, I find, there is nothing more vacuous, more burdensome, or even more impertinent, than letters of consolation.
    Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)

    Whatever is gold does not glitter. A gentle radiance belongs to the noblest metal.
    Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)