American Academy of Arts and Sciences

“ Already, twenty-five artists of respectability of this city await one effort of the American Academy to reëstablish its original standing and reputation, and they will join heart and hand to oppose the Academy of Design (truly so called) by every work of their hands done and to be done. ”

“ The field of art education is large enough to be sub-divided to the advantage and welfare of all, but the Academy must be the highest school, the university of art teaching, or its school department has no reason for existence. ”

“ The five ancient, like the five modern academies, have rendered, all the same, the greatest services to science, and cast a brilliant light on literature and art. This is generally admitted in connection with the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Inscriptions. There is no foreign scientific man, however illustrious, who does not welcome the honour of becoming its associate or correspondent. The Academy of Sciences has taken part in every scientific advance ”

“ There is perhaps no objection to regarding the National Academy of Sciences as a quasi hereditary upper house, whose functions are largely conservative, while the active duties on behalf of science devolve on a more democratic body—The American Association for the Advancement of Science. This association meets at Columbia University, New York City, during the last week of the present month, and with it some fifteen special societies devoted to different sciences. ”

“ The Academy of Sciences, in its more difficult and useful investigation, embraces a study of nature, and the improvement of the arts; and it is to be expected that studies so profound and perseveringly pursued, calculations so exact, and discoveries so refined, will in the end produce a corresponding benefit to the world at large. ”

“ The Academy is approaching its centenary. For nearly one hundred years its progress has been steady and progressive and during all that time its resources have been employed exclusively for the intellectual advancement of mankind in connection with the work of unselfish and devoted men. Its influence has not been local but has been exerted wherever scientific research is cultivated. ”

“ Although seemingly fortuitous, the establishment of the Academy of Design really marks the opening of a distinct era in the history of American art; during which it has developed into a rounded completeness to a degree that enables us, with some measure of fairness, to note the causes which led to it, which have nourished its growth, and which have made it a worthy forerunner of new methods for expressing the artistic yearnings of those who are to follow in years to come. ”

“ But whatever may be our proportion of success, of this we may be sure, that the present Institution will at least contribute to advance our knowledge of the Arts, and bring us nearer to that ideal excellence, which it is the lot of genius always to contemplate and never to attain.{5}
The principal advantage of an Academy is, that, besides furnishing able men to direct the student, it will be a repository for the great examples of the Art. ”

“ Since the beginning of the Academy’s existence, men and women whose names have become illustrious in the annals of American art have been enrolled as students. The schools are equipped in every way to teach the technique of painting and sculpture, the faculty is composed of representative artists of the day; collec{60}tions, galleries, classrooms, models, and casts are admirably fitted to afford instruction fully equal to that obtainable in Europe. ”

“ It is well known, from their memoirs, that these academies included among their members men of eminent talents. The Academy of Sciences, in particular, could boast of several first-rate geniuses in the different branches which they respectively cultivated, and the unremitting labours of some of them have, no doubt, greatly contributed to enlarge the sphere of human knowledge. ”

“ If the National Academy of Sciences has not proved as influential a body as such an academy should, it has still taken such a place in science, and rendered services of such importance to the government, that the circumstances connected with its origin are of permanent historic interest. ”

“ In the first draft of the new Institute, October 25, 1795, no class corresponded exactly to the old Academy of Inscriptions; but most of the members who survived found themselves re-elected either in the class of moral and political science, under which history and geography were included as sections, or more generally under the class of literature and fine arts, which embraced ancient languages, antiquities and monuments.
In 1816 the academy received again its old name. The Proceedings of the society embrace a vast field, and are of very various merits. ”

“ Supported by the British government, the English artist has, free of all expense, at this truly National Academy, opportunities to sketch from life, as well as from casts, and has, moreover, access to a well-chosen library of books. With a generosity worthy of all praise, American artists are admitted to the English Academy, with full permission to share with Englishmen the advantages of the life-school, free of all cost ”

“ The several series of the publications form 151 volumes. The output for the year 1908 amounted to 1,936 pages and 133 plates. It is gratifying to know that the quantity of the matter published is in no sense at the expense of its quality. The importance of the Academy is measurably dependent on the discoveries announced in its publications. They are the organs of speech of the society by means of which it holds communication with naturalists in all civilized countries. They encourage the student to labor, for investigation would be purposeless if the results could not be given to the world. ”

“ At great cost it is arranged to offer every facility for thorough, systematic and complete work in this direction. The school rooms and equipment are unequalled by the Artists' League for the Academy of Design in New York, and are not excelled by the great schools of Paris, up to the present time. ”

“ The men of science and of letters associate with the political leaders. Scientific eminence leads to social recognition and political preferment, while those having wealth and leisure engage in scientific research. The national academies are practically parts of the government. In America great endowments are given to universities, but the personality of the professor is ignored; the government makes large appropriations for the scientific bureaus, but scarcely recognizes the National Academy composed of our most eminent scientific men. ”

“ To these shall be delegated the power to regulate its entire concerns, choose its members, select its students, etc.
"Thus will the germ be formed to grow up into an institution which we trust will be put on such principles as to encourage—not to depress—the arts. When this is done our body will no longer be the Drawing Association, but the National Academy of the Arts of Design, still including all the present association, but in different capacities. ”

“ National Academy of Design.—The growing interest felt in relation to the Fine Arts in this country, and the influence which the National Academy of Design has had in producing that interest, make it imperative upon us to notice the pictures which are annually sent to this exhibition. ”

“ Why, in so many words, that the knowledge of Art in this country is inconsistent with the existence of the Academy, and that their success as a body of men instituted for promoting and encouraging the Fine Arts, requires the destruction or concealment of all works of Art of great and acknowledged excellence. ”

“ We have said that these Art-Unions prevent artists from taking any steps to provide the means of instruction for those who need and seek it. As an illustration of this we may mention the present state of the National Academy of Design. ”

“ The National Academy has taken steps to make its scientific programs of greater general interest and has enlarged its membership, so that instead of at most five new members elected annually there may now be ten. ”

“ Standing as it does between both the local societies and the specialist societies, limited as these are by neighborhood and by subjects respectively, and the more advanced and select National Academy, the association may be likened in position to the college, standing between the schools and academies and the advanced work of the universities and professional institutions. It is the only body, in its very nature and scope, that can bring genuine science before and among the people at large. ”

“ The Academy of Fine Arts, so often and so deservedly praised, has also become nearly unoccupied. Furnished at great cost, under the old Spanish government, and supplied with excellent casts from the finest specimens of statuary in Europe, it was, indeed, an academy of art—for a time ”

“ It was necessary, people were agreed, to offer, in opposition to the Academy of Fine Arts, managed by pedantic dilettants who were embittered by the triumph of the new art, a form of instruction at once free and sane. ”

“ The completion of the building will facilitate and strengthen all the functions of the society in all its departments, and lay the foundation of a workshop in which experts and students may pursue investigations advantageously to science and themselves.
The progress of the Academy has been always deliberate and unobtrusive. It will so continue until accelerated by enlarged resources.
To the full extent of its means the Academy encourages original research, gives instruction to those who seek it, and promotes the diffusion of knowledge. ”

“ The Academy of Sciences, regarded by scientific men as the most important part of the institute, and whose history will be related more fully in other articles, was founded by Minister Colbert in 1666. It grew out of informal gatherings of scientific men who met from time to time to discuss reported, discoveries in the scientific world and to suggest and criticize theories of their own. ”

“ More important was his introduction through the school of the Royal Academy to a circle of young men inspired by new ideas in art, by a resolve to abandon the conventionalities inherited from the eighteenth century, and to revive the detailed elaboration and mystical interpretation of nature that characterised early mediæval art. ”

“ All universities recognize literature in the sense of the old rhetoric, which is art incarnate in words. Some, to their credit, recognize art in its narrower sense, to a certain extent, and confer degrees for proficiency in some of its branches. If there are doctors of music, why should there be no masters of painting, of sculpture, of architecture? I should like to see professors of the fine arts in every university; and instruction in some branch of their work made a part of the arts curriculum. ”

“ The influence of the United States Military Academy upon education, as well as its wide reputation as a school of science, render an inquiry into its rise and progress, a subject both of interest and profit. ”