National Arts Club
Encyclopedia
Gentlemen's club
A gentlemen's club is a members-only private club of a type originally set up by and for British upper class men in the eighteenth century, and popularised by English upper-middle class men and women in the late nineteenth century. Today, some are more open about the gender and social status of...
in Gramercy Park
Gramercy Park
Gramercy Park is a small, fenced-in private park in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park is at the core of both the neighborhood referred to as either Gramercy or Gramercy Park and the Gramercy Park Historic District...
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, USA
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. It was founded in 1898 to "stimulate, foster, and promote public interest in the arts and to educate the American people in the fine arts". Since 1906 the organization has occupied the Samuel J. Tilden House
Samuel J. Tilden House
The Samuel J. Tilden House was the home of Samuel J. Tilden, former governor of the U.S. state of New York and fierce opponent of the Tweed Ring and Tammany Hall. Originally built in 1845, Tilden lived in the brownstone from 1860 until his death in 1885...
, a landmark Gothic Revival brownstone
Brownstone
Brownstone is a brown Triassic or Jurassic sandstone which was once a popular building material. The term is also used in the United States to refer to a terraced house clad in this material.-Types:-Apostle Island brownstone:...
at 15 Gramercy Park, immediately next door and West of the Players Club, with similar interests. The club offers a variety of shows, educational programs, and awards in areas including theater, visual arts, film, literature and music. It is noted for allowing members access to a Gramercy Park key.
Members
The National Arts Club is one of the few private clubs that has admitted women as full and equal members since its inception.Among the distinguished painters who have been members are Robert Henri
Robert Henri
Robert Henri was an American painter and teacher. He was a leading figure of the Ashcan School in art.- Early life :...
, Edward Charles Volkert
Edward Charles Volkert
Edward Charles Volkert , was an American Impressionist artist best known for his colorful and richly painted impressionist landscapes. His trademark subject was that of cattle and plowmen. He has been referred to as America's cattle painter extraordinaire".The son of a hat merchant from Alsace,...
, Frederic Remington
Frederic Remington
Frederic Sackrider Remington was an American painter, illustrator, sculptor, and writer who specialized in depictions of the Old American West, specifically concentrating on the last quarter of the 19th century American West and images of cowboys, American Indians, and the U. S...
, William Merritt Chase
William Merritt Chase
William Merritt Chase was an American painter known as an exponent of Impressionism and as a teacher. He is also responsible for establishing the Chase School, which later would become Parsons The New School for Design.- Early life and training :He was born in Williamsburg , Indiana, to the family...
, Richard C. Pionk, Chen Chi
Chen Chi
Chen Chi was a renowned Chinese painter who became a United States citizen, where he lived and worked for much of his career.Chi was born in Wuxi, Kiangsu, China in 1912. He taught painting at the Wu Pen and Huai Chiu high schools for girls from 1938 to 1944, and at the St. John's University...
and Cecilia Beaux
Cecilia Beaux
Cecilia Beaux was an American society portraitist, in the manner of John Singer Sargent. She was a near contemporary of better-known American artist Mary Cassatt and also received her training in Philadelphia and France...
. Sculptors have been represented by Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Augustus Saint-Gaudens was the Irish-born American sculptor of the Beaux-Arts generation who most embodied the ideals of the "American Renaissance"...
, Daniel Chester French
Daniel Chester French
Daniel Chester French was an American sculptor. His best-known work is the sculpture of a seated Abraham Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.-Life and career:...
, Anna Hyatt Huntington
Anna Hyatt Huntington
Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington was an American sculptor.-Life and career:Huntington was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her father, Alpheus Hyatt, was a professor of paleontology and zoology at Harvard University and MIT, and served as a contributing factor to her early interest in animals and...
and Paul Manship
Paul Manship
Paul Howard Manship was an American sculptor.-Life:Manship began his art studies at the St. Paul School of Art in Minnesota. From there he moved to Philadelphia and continued his education at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts...
. Many renowned literary figures, including W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden , who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet,The first definition of "Anglo-American" in the OED is: "Of, belonging to, or involving both England and America." See also the definition "English in origin or birth, American by settlement or citizenship" in See also...
, Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
and Frank McCourt
Frank McCourt
Francis "Frank" McCourt was an Irish-American teacher and Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, best known as the author of Angela’s Ashes, an award-winning, tragicomic memoir of the misery and squalor of his childhood....
have been members.
The National Arts Club is proud of its early recognition of new media art forms, like photography, film and digital media, and counts Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz
Alfred Stieglitz was an American photographer and modern art promoter who was instrumental over his fifty-year career in making photography an accepted art form...
as one of its early members. Musicians Victor Herbert
Victor Herbert
Victor August Herbert was an Irish-born, German-raised American composer, cellist and conductor. Although Herbert enjoyed important careers as a cello soloist and conductor, he is best known for composing many successful operettas that premiered on Broadway from the 1890s to World War I...
and Walter Damrosch were members, as were architects Stanford White
Stanford White
Stanford White was an American architect and partner in the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White, the frontrunner among Beaux-Arts firms. He designed a long series of houses for the rich and the very rich, and various public, institutional, and religious buildings, some of which can be found...
and George B. Post
George B. Post
George Browne Post was an American architect trained in the Beaux-Arts tradition.-Biography:Post was a student of Richard Morris Hunt , but unlike many architects of his generation, he had previously received a degree in civil engineering...
.
The Dramatic Arts are currently represented by members Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
, Ethan Hawke
Ethan Hawke
Ethan Green Hawke is an American actor, writer and director. He made his feature film debut in 1985 with the science fiction movie Explorers, before making a supporting appearance in the 1989 drama Dead Poets Society which is considered his breakthrough role...
, Dennis Hopper
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Lee Hopper was an American actor, filmmaker and artist. As a young man, Hopper became interested in acting and eventually became a student of the Actors' Studio. He made his first television appearance in 1954 and appeared in two films featuring James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause and Giant...
, Robert Redford
Robert Redford
Charles Robert Redford, Jr. , better known as Robert Redford, is an American actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. He has received two Oscars: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime...
and Uma Thurman
Uma Thurman
Uma Karuna Thurman is an American actress and model. She has performed in leading roles in a variety of films, ranging from romantic comedies and dramas to science fiction and action movies. Among her best-known roles are those in the Quentin Tarantino films Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill...
, and the literary arts by such writers as Alice Hoffman
Alice Hoffman
Alice Hoffman is an American novelist and young-adult and children's writer, best known for her 1996 novel Practical Magic, which was adapted for a 1998 film of the same name...
and Edward Renehan
Edward Renehan
Edward John Renehan, Jr. is a publisher, consultant and writer, and onetime professional musician. He made headlines in 2008 when he was convicted of document theft.-Biography:...
. The membership of the National Arts Club has included three Presidents of the United States: Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...
, Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
, and Dwight Eisenhower.
The current president is painter and philanthropist Dianne Bernhard, who assumed the office in June, 2011. She succeeded O. Aldon James, who had run the organization since 1985. No stranger to controversy, James was credited with revitalizing the organization and doubling the membership. In the same period, however, there was a conviction for fraudulent use of the club's nonprofit tax identity by James's twin-brother John, and another conviction for the theft of tax receipts by the club's dining room manager, as well as a high-profile conflict with Gramercy Park trustees over the cutting of trees that the club sought to save, and doubts aired in 2004 that the club's historic building was being properly maintained.
History
The last decade of the 19th century saw a proliferation of clubs in New York City. A group of friends, all of them involved in architecture, art, or civic affairs, discussed the possibility of a new kind of club that would embrace all the arts. The establishment of the Club came at a time when American artists were increasingly turning to their own nation rather than exclusively to Europe as a center of work and creativity. Significantly, the Club would offer full membership for women at the onset, reflecting their accomplishment in the arts.While the group was working out an organizational plan, Charles DeKay
Charles DeKay
Charles Augustus DeKay was a linguist, poet, critic and a fencer. He was a son of George Coleman De Kay, a naval officer. He was best known for founding the National Arts Club and the Fencers Club. He was inducted into the United States Fencing Hall of Fame in 2008...
, the literary and art critic of the New York Times for 18 years, returned from a diplomatic post abroad. An inspired organizer and entrepreneur, he sent letters to men and women of importance in the New York area as well as in metropolitan areas across the country. The response was so enthusiastic that the Club was able to apply to Albany for its charter in 1898. With the application went a list of the officers, Board of Trustees, and members totaling more than 1200.
The list included such collectors as Henry Frick
Henry Frick
Henry Frick was a Whig member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania.Henry Frick was born in Northumberland, Pennsylvania. He attended the public schools and apprenticed to a printer in Philadelphia. He served in the War of 1812...
, William Evans
William Evans
-Politicians and military:*William Evans , British Army officer during the War of Spanish Succession*William Evans , American Indian Wars soldier...
, Benjamin Altman, Jules Bache
Jules Bache
Jules Semon Bache was a German-born American banker, art collector and philanthropist.-Biography:Born in Germany, as a young boy his family emigrated to the United States, settling in New York City. In 1881, he started work as a cashier at Leopold Cahn & Co., a stockbrokerage firm founded by his...
and Henry Walters
Henry Walters
Henry Walters was president of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad until he retired in 1902. He was founder of the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland.-Biography:...
. Though not a charter member, J. Pierpont Morgan joined the Club early in its development and later was made an Honorary Vice President. Among the artists of the period, earlier charter members, or those joined in the early days of the Club were Frederic Remington
Frederic Remington
Frederic Sackrider Remington was an American painter, illustrator, sculptor, and writer who specialized in depictions of the Old American West, specifically concentrating on the last quarter of the 19th century American West and images of cowboys, American Indians, and the U. S...
, William Merritt Chase
William Merritt Chase
William Merritt Chase was an American painter known as an exponent of Impressionism and as a teacher. He is also responsible for establishing the Chase School, which later would become Parsons The New School for Design.- Early life and training :He was born in Williamsburg , Indiana, to the family...
, Robert Henri
Robert Henri
Robert Henri was an American painter and teacher. He was a leading figure of the Ashcan School in art.- Early life :...
and George Bellows
George Bellows
George Wesley Bellows was an American realist painter, known for his bold depictions of urban life in New York City, becoming, according to the Columbus Museum of Art, "the most acclaimed American artist of his generation".-Youth:Bellows was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio...
.
The Club's first home was a brownstone on West 34th Street. Commerce, meanwhile, was moving up from downtown, and the neighborhood of brownstones was changing. Spencer Trask
Spencer Trask
Spencer Trask was an American financier, philanthropist, and venture capitalist. Beginning in the 1870s, Trask began investing and supporting entrepreneurs, including Thomas Edison's invention of the electric light bulb and his electricity network...
, its treasurer, was asked to find the Club a new home. He found that 14 and 15 Gramercy Park South, the former home of Samuel Tilden, was on the market. Legend has it that he was so afraid that some other buyer would also find it that he put down some money of his own to bind the bargain. In 1906, the Club acquired the Samuel J. Tilden House
Samuel J. Tilden House
The Samuel J. Tilden House was the home of Samuel J. Tilden, former governor of the U.S. state of New York and fierce opponent of the Tweed Ring and Tammany Hall. Originally built in 1845, Tilden lived in the brownstone from 1860 until his death in 1885...
.
Since the Summer 2006, the Manson's stoop at 14 Gramercy Park has been under restoration. Recently, New York artist Sergio Rossetti Morosini has sculpted the bust of Michelangelo on its façade.