Yaddo
Encyclopedia
Yaddo is an artists' community located on a 400 acre (1.6 km²) estate in Saratoga Springs
, New York
. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment."
It offers residencies to artists working in choreography, film, literature, musical composition, painting, performance art, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and video. Collectively, artists who have worked at Yaddo have won 66 Pulitzer Prizes, 27 MacArthur Fellowships, 61 National Book Awards, 24 National Book Critics Circle Awards
, 108 Rome Prizes
, 49 Whiting Writers' Awards
, a Nobel Prize (Saul Bellow
, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature
in 1976), and countless other honors. Yaddo is included in the Union Avenue Historic District
.
and his wife, the writer Katrina Trask
. The first mansion on the property burned down in 1893, and the Trasks then built the current house. Yaddo is a word invented by one of the Trask children and was meant to rhyme with "shadow." “One of the show places of the U. S., Yaddo is a 500 acres (2 km²) estate with pine groves, vast lawns, artificial lakes with ducks, famous rose gardens, white marble fountains. The name Yaddo was a baby pronunciation given by the Trask children (all four of whom died in childhood) to The Shadows, a famous inn formerly on the site of the Trask estate, where the Trasks had spent their summers. It was one of the dozen places where Poe
was supposed to have written The Raven
and Katrina Trask said it inspired her own poetry. }}
. The first artists moved in in 1926. The success of Yaddo encouraged Spencer and Katrina later to donate land for a working women's retreat center as well, known as Wiawaka Holiday House
, at the request of Mary Wiltsie Fuller.
Yaddo has hosted more than 6,000 artists, including Hannah Arendt
, Newton Arvin
, Milton Avery
, James Baldwin
, Leonard Bernstein
, Truman Capote
, John Cheever
, Aaron Copland
, Kenneth Fearing
, Jonathan Franzen
, Daniel Fuchs
, Philip Guston
, Daron Hagen
, Ruth Heller
, Patricia Highsmith
, Langston Hughes
, Ted Hughes
, Alfred Kazin
, Ulysses Kay
, Jacob Lawrence
, Alan Lelchuk
, Robert Lowell
, Sylvia Plath
, Ned Rorem
, Henry Roth
, Philip Roth
, Katherine Anne Porter
, Mario Puzo
, Clyfford Still
, Virgil Thomson
, Colm Tóibín
, Flannery O'Connor
, Anne Truitt
, Byron Vazakas
, and David Foster Wallace
.
As happened elsewhere during the McCarthy Era, the peace and quiet cultivated in the place of refuge that was the colony was shattered in 1949 when a news story accused writer Agnes Smedley
of spying for the Soviet Union
. Smedley had traveled with Mao Zedong
to report on the Chinese Communist Revolution. In 1943, she visited Yaddo and remained there for the next five years. Poet Robert Lowell
pushed the Board of Directors to oust Yaddo's director, Elizabeth Ames, who was being questioned by the FBI. However, she was eventually exonerated of all charges, but she learned from the investigation that her assistant Mary Townsend was an FBI informant. Ames remained director until her death in 1977, having overseen the Yaddo community since 1926.
book Wake Up Sir!
guns, damaged two of the Four Seasons statues, the Poet's Bench, a fountain, and pathways with blue paint. Repairs cost an estimated $1,400.
Entering its second century, Yaddo accepts contributions to its endowment and underwriting for specific projects to ensure that the artists' community will always be a place of inspiration. During the Centennial Gift Campaign, Yaddo received large contributions from Spencer Trask & Company and Kevin Kimberlin
, the firm's current chairman. Novelist Patricia Highsmith
bequeathed her entire estate, valued at $3 million, to the community.
Saratoga Springs, New York
Saratoga Springs, also known as simply Saratoga, is a city in Saratoga County, New York, United States. The population was 26,586 at the 2010 census. The name reflects the presence of mineral springs in the area. While the word "Saratoga" is known to be a corruption of a Native American name, ...
, 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...
. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment."
It offers residencies to artists working in choreography, film, literature, musical composition, painting, performance art, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and video. Collectively, artists who have worked at Yaddo have won 66 Pulitzer Prizes, 27 MacArthur Fellowships, 61 National Book Awards, 24 National Book Critics Circle Awards
National Book Critics Circle Award
The National Book Critics Circle Award is an annual award given by the National Book Critics Circle to promote the finest books and reviews published in English....
, 108 Rome Prizes
Rome Prize
The Rome Prize is an American award made annually by the American Academy in Rome, through a national competition, to 15 emerging artists and to 15 scholars The Rome Prize is an American award made annually by the American Academy in Rome, through a national competition, to 15 emerging artists...
, 49 Whiting Writers' Awards
Whiting Writers' Award
The Whiting Writers' Award is an American award presented annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and plays. The award is sponsored by the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation and has been presented since 1985. As of 2007, winners receive US $50,000.-External links:**...
, a Nobel Prize (Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature
Nobel Prize in Literature
Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...
in 1976), and countless other honors. Yaddo is included in the Union Avenue Historic District
Union Avenue Historic District (Saratoga Springs, New York)
Union Avenue Historic District is a historic district in Saratoga Springs, New York. It was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1978....
.
History
The estate was purchased in 1881 by the financier Spencer TraskSpencer 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...
and his wife, the writer Katrina Trask
Katrina Trask
Katrina Trask , also known as Kate Nichols Trask, was an American author and philanthropist.- Life account :She was born Kate Nichols in Brooklyn, New York to George Little Nichols and Christina Mary Cole...
. The first mansion on the property burned down in 1893, and the Trasks then built the current house. Yaddo is a word invented by one of the Trask children and was meant to rhyme with "shadow." “One of the show places of the U. S., Yaddo is a 500 acres (2 km²) estate with pine groves, vast lawns, artificial lakes with ducks, famous rose gardens, white marble fountains. The name Yaddo was a baby pronunciation given by the Trask children (all four of whom died in childhood) to The Shadows, a famous inn formerly on the site of the Trask estate, where the Trasks had spent their summers. It was one of the dozen places where Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
was supposed to have written The Raven
The Raven
"The Raven" is a narrative poem by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in January 1845. It is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere. It tells of a talking raven's mysterious visit to a distraught lover, tracing the man's slow descent into madness...
and Katrina Trask said it inspired her own poetry. }}
Artists' colony
In 1900, after the premature deaths of the Trasks' four children, Spencer Trask decided to turn the estate into an artist's retreat as a gift to his wife. He did this with the financial assistance of philanthropist George Foster PeabodyGeorge Foster Peabody
George Foster Peabody was a banker and philanthropist.-Early life:...
. The first artists moved in in 1926. The success of Yaddo encouraged Spencer and Katrina later to donate land for a working women's retreat center as well, known as Wiawaka Holiday House
Wiawaka Holiday House
Wiawaka is a holiday house for women. It has lake front property on Lake George, New York. It is one of the few remaining fully operational vacation/retreat centers which arose out of the women’s rights movement in the early part of the twentieth century...
, at the request of Mary Wiltsie Fuller.
Yaddo has hosted more than 6,000 artists, including Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt was a German American political theorist. She has often been described as a philosopher, although she refused that label on the grounds that philosophy is concerned with "man in the singular." She described herself instead as a political theorist because her work centers on the fact...
, Newton Arvin
Newton Arvin
Newton Arvin was an American literary critic and academic. He achieved national recognition for his studies of individual nineteenth-century American authors....
, Milton Avery
Milton Avery
Milton Avery was an American modern painter. Born in Altmar, New York, he moved to Connecticut in 1898 and later to New York City.-Biography:...
, James Baldwin
James Baldwin (writer)
James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.Baldwin's essays, for instance "Notes of a Native Son" , explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th century America,...
, Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
, Truman Capote
Truman Capote
Truman Streckfus Persons , known as Truman Capote , was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime novel In Cold Blood , which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At...
, John Cheever
John Cheever
John William Cheever was an American novelist and short story writer. He is sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs." His fiction is mostly set in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the Westchester suburbs, old New England villages based on various South Shore towns around Quincy,...
, Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...
, Kenneth Fearing
Kenneth Fearing
Kenneth Fearing was an American poet, novelist, and founding editor of the Partisan Review. Literary critic Macha Rosenthal called him "the chief poet of the American Depression."-Early life:...
, Jonathan Franzen
Jonathan Franzen
Jonathan Franzen is an American novelist and essayist. His third novel, The Corrections , a sprawling, satirical family drama, drew widespread critical acclaim, earned Franzen a National Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction...
, Daniel Fuchs
Daniel Fuchs
Daniel Fuchs was an American screenwriter, fiction writer, and essayist.-Biography:Daniel Fuchs was born in the Lower East Side, Manhattan, but his family migrated to Williamsburg, Brooklyn while Fuchs was an infant...
, Philip Guston
Philip Guston
Philip Guston was a notable painter and printmaker in the New York School, which included many of the Abstract expressionists, such as Jackson Pollock and Willem De Kooning...
, Daron Hagen
Daron Hagen
Daron Aric Hagen , is an American composer, conductor, pianist, educator, librettist, and stage director of contemporary classical music and opera.- Early life and education :...
, Ruth Heller
Ruth Heller
Ruth Heller was a children's author and graphic artist known for her use of bright color and detail in both geometric design and the representation of creatures,plants, patterns, and puzzles. She worked primarily with a combination of colored pencil and marker for her book illustrations...
, Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith was an American novelist and short-story writer most widely known for her psychological thrillers, which led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, has been adapted for stage and screen numerous times, notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951...
, Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...
, Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Edward James Hughes OM , more commonly known as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until...
, Alfred Kazin
Alfred Kazin
Alfred Kazin was an American writer and literary critic, many of whose writings depicted the immigrant experience in early twentieth century America....
, Ulysses Kay
Ulysses Kay
Ulysses Simpson Kay was an African American composer. His music is mostly neoclassical in style....
, Jacob Lawrence
Jacob Lawrence
Jacob Lawrence was an American painter; he was married to fellow artist Gwendolyn Knight. Lawrence referred to his style as "dynamic cubism", though by his own account the primary influence was not so much French art as the shapes and colors of Harlem.Lawrence is among the best-known twentieth...
, Alan Lelchuk
Alan Lelchuk
Alan Lelchuk is a novelist, professor, and editor from Brooklyn, New York. He did his undergraduate work at Brooklyn College and received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1965...
, Robert Lowell
Robert Lowell
Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet, considered the founder of the confessional poetry movement. He was appointed the sixth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress where he served from 1947 until 1948...
, Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...
, Ned Rorem
Ned Rorem
Ned Rorem is a Pulitzer prize-winning American composer and diarist. He is best known and most praised for his song settings.-Life:...
, Henry Roth
Henry Roth
Henry Roth was an American novelist and short story writer.-Biography:Roth was born in Tysmenitz near Stanislaviv, Galicia, Austro-Hungary...
, Philip Roth
Philip Roth
Philip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award...
, Katherine Anne Porter
Katherine Anne Porter
Katherine Anne Porter was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist. Her 1962 novel Ship of Fools was the best-selling novel in America that year, but her short stories received much more critical acclaim...
, Mario Puzo
Mario Puzo
Mario Gianluigi Puzo was an American author and screenwriter, known for his novels about the Mafia, including The Godfather , which he later co-adapted into a film by Francis Ford Coppola...
, Clyfford Still
Clyfford Still
Clyfford Still was an American painter, and one of the leading figures of Abstract Expressionism.-Biography:...
, Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music...
, Colm Tóibín
Colm Tóibín
Colm Tóibín is a multi-award-winning Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic, and, most recently, poet.Tóibín is Leonard Milberg Lecturer in Irish Letters at Princeton University in New Jersey and succeeded Martin Amis as professor of creative writing at the...
, Flannery O'Connor
Flannery O'Connor
Mary Flannery O'Connor was an American novelist, short-story writer and essayist. An important voice in American literature, O'Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries...
, Anne Truitt
Anne Truitt
Anne Truitt was a major American artist of the mid-20th century; she is associated with both minimalism and Color Field artists like Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland....
, Byron Vazakas
Byron Vazakas
Byron Vazakas was an American poet, whose career extended from the modernist era well into the postmodernist period; nominee for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1947.-Life:...
, and David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace was an American author of novels, essays, and short stories, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California...
.
As happened elsewhere during the McCarthy Era, the peace and quiet cultivated in the place of refuge that was the colony was shattered in 1949 when a news story accused writer Agnes Smedley
Agnes Smedley
Agnes Smedley was an American journalist and writer best known for her semi-autobiographical novelDaughter of Earth. She was also known for her sympathetic chronicling of the Chinese revolution...
of spying for the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. Smedley had traveled with Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
to report on the Chinese Communist Revolution. In 1943, she visited Yaddo and remained there for the next five years. Poet Robert Lowell
Robert Lowell
Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV was an American poet, considered the founder of the confessional poetry movement. He was appointed the sixth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress where he served from 1947 until 1948...
pushed the Board of Directors to oust Yaddo's director, Elizabeth Ames, who was being questioned by the FBI. However, she was eventually exonerated of all charges, but she learned from the investigation that her assistant Mary Townsend was an FBI informant. Ames remained director until her death in 1977, having overseen the Yaddo community since 1926.
In literature
The retreat was the partial setting of the 2004 Jonathan AmesJonathan Ames
Jonathan Ames is an American author who has written a number of novels and comic memoirs. He was a columnist for the New York Press for several years, and became known for self-deprecating tales of his sexual misadventures. He also has a long-time envy of boxing, appearing occasionally in the ring...
book Wake Up Sir!
Recent years
In May 2005, vandals, using paintballPaintball
Paintball is a sport in which players compete, in teams or individually, to eliminate opponents by tagging them with capsules containing water soluble dye and gelatin shell outside propelled from a device called a paintball marker . Paintballs have a non-toxic, biodegradable, water soluble...
guns, damaged two of the Four Seasons statues, the Poet's Bench, a fountain, and pathways with blue paint. Repairs cost an estimated $1,400.
Entering its second century, Yaddo accepts contributions to its endowment and underwriting for specific projects to ensure that the artists' community will always be a place of inspiration. During the Centennial Gift Campaign, Yaddo received large contributions from Spencer Trask & Company and Kevin Kimberlin
Kevin Kimberlin
Kevin Kimberlin is chairman of the venture capital firm Spencer Trask & Co. Kimberlin has distinguished himself by backing “obsessive missionaries,” such as Jonas Salk, Walter Gilbert, and John Wennberg...
, the firm's current chairman. Novelist Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith was an American novelist and short-story writer most widely known for her psychological thrillers, which led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, has been adapted for stage and screen numerous times, notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951...
bequeathed her entire estate, valued at $3 million, to the community.