Suzan Frecon and Bridget Riley Inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters

For their contributions to the field of art, Suzan Frecon and Bridget Riley have been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters alongside seventeen new members and two honorary members during its annual Ceremonial on May 18, 2022. Frecon is one of three visual artists to be inducted this year, and Riley has been inducted as a Foreign Honorary member.   

Membership in the Academy is limited to 300 architects, visual artists, composers, and writers who are elected for life and pay no dues. New members were elected by vote of the existing membership. The honor of election is considered the highest form of recognition of artistic merit in the United States.

In addition to its regular membership, the Academy’s American Honorary membership recognizes up to twenty Americans of extraordinary artistic achievement whose work falls outside of or transcends the fields of architecture, art, literature, and music composition, while Foreign Honorary membership celebrates up to seventy-five distinguished architects, artists, writers, and composers from other countries whose work the Academy’s membership greatly admires.

Current members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters include Josef Albers, Joan Mitchell, Alice Neel, Robert Ryman, and Richard Serra. Foreign honorary members include Yayoi Kusama, Sigmar Polke, and Luc Tuymans.

Frecon’s solo exhibition at our London gallery is on view through May 28, and marks the artist’s first solo presentation in London. The largest survey of Riley’s work in the US in twenty years is also on view at the Yale Center for British Art, through July 24. 

Learn more at the American Academy of Arts and Letters.


Cover image: Suzan Frecon, 2015. Photo by Julie Brown Harwood. Bridget Riley, 1990. Courtesy of the Bridget Riley Archive