NEW YORK, NY.- The National Academy announced the election of thirteen new visual artists and architect Academicians, including Edward Ruscha, Martin Puryear, Michael Manfredi and Marion Weiss, and Charles Renfro.
National Academicians are elected annually by their peers for their contribution to American art and architecture. Upon election, each Academician contributes a representative work known as a diploma presentation, which collectively forms the National Academy's preeminent permanent collection of more than 7,000 artworks, architectural drawings, photographs and models from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.
This year's newly elected Academicians are: visual artists Ida Applebroog, Jane Dickson, Martin Puryear, Edward Ruscha, Joan Semmel and Stanley Whitney; and architects Peter Bohlin, Preston Scott Cohen, Michael Manfredi and Marion Weiss, Eric Owen Moss, Antoine Predock and Charles Renfro.
"2014 is an exceptional year for the National Academy with this new class of Academicians," said Bruce Fowle, President of the National Academy. "This is the first year in history that we are inducting more architects than artists, and shows the Academy's commitment to its original mission of celebrating the very best of American art and architecture."
He continued: "The inductees' exceptional range of work speaks to the very core of what the National Academy has always represented: collecting and sharing work by the preeminent artists and architects working in this country today. Each and every one of these artists and architects are leaders in their fields and will add immeasurably to the National Academy family."
The historic roster of Academicians exceeds 2,000 artists and architects dating back to the organization's founding in 1825. They include pioneers of early American art such as Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent, as well as later seminal artists and architects including Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Louise Bourgeois and Frank Gehry, and some of the leaders in their respective fields today, including John Currin, Marina Abramović, David Adjaye and Annabelle Selldorf.
