Ceremonial

At the Annual Ceremonial in May, members and award winners gather onstage in the Academy's auditorium to formally induct new members, confer awards and honors, and listen to a distinguished speaker deliver the Blashfield Address. The Ceremonial is preceded by a luncheon for members and award winners.

Blashfield Address

In 1916 Evangeline Wilbour Blashfield established a fund for an annual address that would assist the American Academy of Arts and Letters to both preserve the English language in its beauty and integrity, and to cautiously enrich it with such terms as grow out of the modern condition. The focus of the address has evolved over the decades, and is now devoted to some aspect of arts or letters by a distinguished speaker.

Click here for the list of previous speakers.

The 2008 Blashfield Address, entitled The Unobtrusives, was delivered by Wallace Shawn at the May 21 Ceremonial. Mr. Shawn received an Academy Award in Literature in 1997 and was elected to the Academy in 2006.

  Listen to the 2008 Blashfield Address.

  View the text of the 2008 Blashfield Address.