National Academy of Design

Start with the street. On this stretch of Fifth Avenue, stone townhouses face the trees of Central Park. Traffic hums. Joggers pass along the park wall. Look at the old limestone facades and their tall windows, and imagine painters, sculptors and architects climbing these steps for meetings. For much of the twentieth century, one of these grand houses near Eighty-ninth Street belonged to an artists' society. That society is the National Academy of Design.

The Academy is older than almost every art museum in the United States. It began in 1825, when a group of young New York artists formed a drawing association. A year later they renamed it the National Academy of Design. The name sounds official, almost governmental. It was not. The founders chose the word "national" as a statement of ambition. They wanted American art to stand on its own.

The group had a clear reason to break away. New York already had an art institution, the American Academy of the Fine Arts. The painter John Trumbull led it, and wealthy patrons largely ran it. Younger artists felt shut out. They wanted somewhere to draw, to study, and to show their work. So they built their own organisation, with one firm principle — artists would govern it, not collectors or businessmen.

Here is the first surprise. The Academy's first president was Samuel F. B. Morse. Today most people know Morse for the telegraph and for Morse code. But Morse trained as a painter first, and he took his painting very seriously. He made large history pictures and many portraits. Only later did he turn to electricity and long-distance signals. The man behind the dots and dashes once led New York's artists.

The early circle included other famous names. Thomas Cole was one of them. He was a landscape painter, and later writers saw him as the founder of the Hudson River School. That was a loose group of artists who painted wild American scenery — mountains, waterfalls and river valleys under dramatic skies. Asher Durand, another landscape painter, also played a central role. Through these artists, the Academy became closely tied to the way Americans first pictured their own landscape.

The Academy has always worked in three ways. It is an honorary society, it once ran a school, and it holds a collection. Membership is by election. Artists choose other artists. Members may add the letters "N A" after their names, short for National Academician. Over two centuries, the members included painters, sculptors, printmakers and architects. Election here was a sign of respect from one's peers.

Now for a tradition that most visitors never hear about. When the Academy elected a new associate member, it asked for a portrait of that artist. Sometimes the artist painted a self-portrait. Sometimes a friend or colleague painted it. Full members then gave a representative work of their own. Over many decades, these gifts built a remarkable archive. It is a gallery of artists' faces, a kind of family album of American art.

The school mattered just as much as the society. For generations, students came here to draw from plaster casts and from live models. This was the standard academic training of the time. Many students went on to careers as painters, illustrators and teachers. The classes were a practical path into the profession. For a young artist in nineteenth-century New York, there were few other places to learn in a structured way.

The Academy moved several times as the city grew northward. In the 1860s, it opened a building at Twenty-third Street and Fourth Avenue, now Park Avenue South. That building followed the Venetian Gothic style. This style takes its cue from medieval Venice, with striped stonework and pointed arches. Its design looked toward the Doge's Palace, the old seat of Venice's rulers. That building is gone now, but in its day it was a striking sight in Manhattan.

In the 1940s, the Academy came to this part of Fifth Avenue. The house was a gift from Archer Milton Huntington and his wife, Anna Hyatt Huntington. Archer was a scholar and philanthropist with a great fortune. Anna was a sculptor, best known for her animals and her figures on horseback. The couple gave generously to many cultural institutions. Their gift turned a private mansion into galleries, studios and meeting rooms for artists.

Picture the change. Rooms built for dinner parties became places for exhibitions. Upper floors held classes. Marble stairs and carved details remained, so visitors walked through a domestic interior to look at art. The location also placed the Academy on Museum Mile. That is the stretch of Fifth Avenue where several major museums line the park. The Guggenheim, with its white spiral, stands just a short walk away.

Here is the second surprise. The Academy no longer has a museum in this house. In the 2010s, after financial difficulties, it closed its school and sold its Fifth Avenue buildings. In 2017, it returned to its original name, the National Academy of Design, after years as a museum and school. Today it works without a permanent public museum. It continues as a society of artists and architects, and it presents programmes and exhibitions in other spaces.

So the building in front of you now tells only part of the story. The Academy was never really about one address. It was about a group of artists who decided to organise themselves, to teach, and to judge each other's work. That idea has lasted for two centuries. It moved from downtown rooms to a Venetian-style hall, then to this townhouse, and now beyond any single building.

Take a moment before you walk on. Look up at the windows and the stone. Then turn toward the park, where the trees move in the wind. Many of the Academy's early members painted exactly this kind of view — light on leaves, water and open sky. As you continue along Fifth Avenue, notice the other mansions and museums. Many of them owe something to the same idea: in New York, artists and patrons built institutions together.