American Academy of Arts and Letters - Other Awards

Other Awards

The academy gives out numerous awards, with recipients chosen by committees made up of Academy members. Candidates for all awards must be nominated by Academy members, except for the Richard Rodgers awards, for which an application may be submitted.

• Academy Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters – In 1941 the Academy established awards to encourage creative work in the arts. Now $7500 each, Academy Awards are given annually: five to artists, eight to writers, four to composers, and three to architects.

• Marc Blitzstein Award – The $5,000 award is given periodically to a composer, lyricist, or librettist, "to encourage the creation of works of merit for musical theater and opera". The award was established in 1965 by the friends of Marc Blitzstein, an Academy member.

• Michael Braude Award for Light Verse – The $5,000 biennial award is given "for light verse written in English regardless of the country of origin of the writer".

• Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize – The annual prize of $5,000 goes to an architect of any nationality who has "made a contribution to architecture as an art".

• Benjamin H. Danks Award – The $20,000 award is given in rotation to a composer of ensemble works, a playwright, and a writer (fiction, non-fiction, poetry). Since 2002 the Academy has administered the prize established by Roy Lyndon Danks in honor of his father, Benjamin Hadley Danks.

• Jimmy Ernst Award – Established by Dallas Ernst in memory of her husband, the Jimmy Ernst Award of $5,000 is given to a painter or sculptor "whose lifetime contribution to his or her vision has been both consistent and dedicated". The award has been presented annually since 1990.

• E. M. Forster Award – E.M. Forster, a foreign honorary member of the Academy, bequeathed the U.S. royalties of his posthumous novel Maurice to Christopher Isherwood, who transferred them to the Academy to establish this $15,000 award. It is given to a young English writer for an extended visit to the United States.

• American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medals – Each year the Academy awards Gold Medals for distinguished achievement in two categories in rotation. The Gold Medal is given for the entire work of the recipient.
  • Belles Lettres, Criticism, Essays and Painting;
  • Biography and Music;
  • Fiction and Sculpture;
  • History and Architecture, including Landscape Architecture;
  • Poetry and Music;
  • Drama and Graphic Art.

• Walter Hinrichsen Award – The Walter Hinrichsen Award is given for the publication of "a work by a mid-career American composer."

• William Dean Howells Medal – This award is given once every five years in recognition of the most distinguished American novel published during that period. It was established in 1925.

• The Charles Ives Awards – Six scholarships of $7500 and two fellowships of $15,000 are now given annually to young composers. In 1998, the Academy established the Charles Ives Living, an award of $75,000 a year for a period of three years given to an American composer. The award's purpose is to free "a promising talent from the need to devote his or her time to any employment other than music composition" during that period.

• Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction – The $5,000 prize is given for the best published first novel or collection of short stories in the preceding year.

• Wladimir and Rhoda Lakond Award – an annual award of $5,000 "given either to a composition student or an experienced composer".

• Goddard Lieberson Fellowships – Two Goddard Lieberson Fellowships of $15,000 are given annually to young composers of extraordinary gifts. The CBS Foundation endowed the fellowships in memory of the late president of CBS Records.

• Russell Loines Award for Poetry

• American Academy of Arts and Letters Award of Merit – The Award of Merit, a medal and $10,000, is given each year, in rotation, to an outstanding person in America representing one of the following arts: Painting, the Short Story, Sculpture, the Novel, Poetry, and Drama.

• Metcalf Awards – In 1986, the Academy received a bequest from Addison M. Metcalf, son of the late member Willard L. Metcalf, for two awards to honor young writers and artists of great promise. The Willard L. Metcalf Award in Art and the Addison M. Metcalf Award in Literature are biennial awards of $10,000.

• Katherine Anne Porter Award – This biennial award of $20,000 goes to a prose writer who has demonstrated achievements and dedication to the literary profession.

• Arthur Rense Prize – In 1998, the $20,000 award was established to honor "an exceptional poet" once every third year.

• Richard Rodgers Awards for Musical Theater – These awards subsidize full productions, studio productions, and staged readings of musicals put on by nonprofit theaters in New York City. The plays are by composers and writers not already established in this field. These are the only awards for which the Academy accepts applications.

• Rome Prize in Literature – Every year the Academy selects and partly subsidizes two young writers for a one-year residence at the American Academy in Rome.

• Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Awards – Each of these two awards are for $5,000. The first, established in 1956, is for a fiction work of "considerable literary achievement" published in the previous year. The second, created in 1959, is for a young painter "who has not yet been accorded due recognition".

• Medal for Spoken Language – This medal, awarded from time to time, recognizes individuals who set a standard of excellence in the use of spoken language.

• The Mildred and Harold Strauss Livings – These Livings provide an annual stipend of $50,000 a year for five years, awarded to two writers of English prose literature to enable them to devote their time exclusively to writing.

• Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award – This $10,000 award is given each year to honor a writer of "recent prose that merits recognition for the quality of its style".

• Morton Dauwen Zabel Award – This $10,000 biennial award is given in rotation to a poet, writer of fiction, or critic, "of progressive, original, and experimental tendencies".