Cheers To 200 Years Of The National Academy Of Design

When the National Academy of Design was founded in 1825, it initiated the annual election of National Academicians, a community of creatives elected by their peers in recognition of their extraordinary contributions to art and architecture in America. The number of living academicians is limited to 500, and more than 2,400 artists and architects have been elected since its inception. Among the inducted are Marina Abramović, Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Maya Lin, and John Singer Sargent. The 2024 class is no less star-studded: Amy Sherald, SO-IL’s Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu, Asymptote Architecture’s Lise Anne Couture and Hani Rashid, and Nader Tehrani among them.

All 28 inductees will be feted and their work displayed this summer in “Kinetic Traces,” at the academy’s New York gallery, which, after eight decades on the Upper East Side, now occupies an airy 7,800-square-foot space in Chelsea by Bade Stageberg Cox. “As the academy approaches its 200th anniversary this fall,” executive director Gregory Wessner says, “the induction of these artists and architects powerfully reaffirms our commitment to celebrating bold and visionary contributions to contemporary art and architecture in the U.S. as much now as we did two centuries ago.”