Arts and Letters

NEW YORK, APRIL 2, 2026 – The American Academy of Arts and Letters announces the recipients of its highest honors for excellence in the arts: two Gold Medals, this year for Architecture and History, and the Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts. The recipients of these awards were chosen by the 300 members of Arts and Letters.

Given each year in rotating categories of the arts, our Gold Medals are awarded to those who have achieved eminence in an entire body of work. Architect Toshiko Mori will receive the Gold Medal for Architecture, and writer and historian James McPherson will receive the Gold Medal for History.

Toshiko Mori is the founding principal of Toshiko Mori Architect and a professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. With a body of work known for its minimalist restraint and innovative use of materials, Mori’s ecologically- and site-sensitive domestic and international designs have earned her critical attention. Recent work includes master plans for the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central Branch and the Buffalo Botanical Gardens; Thread Cultural Center and Artists’ Residences as well as the Fass School and Teachers’ Residence, both in Senegal; and the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs Stephen Robert ’62 Hall at Brown University. She was elected to Arts and Letters in 2020.

American historian James McPherson’s dedication to research and education on the Civil War has resulted in over a dozen award-winning books that have helped us understand the war’s causes, complexities, and legacy. He is George Henry Davis ’86 Professor of American History Emeritus at Princeton and a Pulitzer Prize winner for Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (1989). McPherson is also a champion of preservation of historic battlefields, and an outspoken advocate for recognizing the reverberating resonance of the issues underpinning the Civil War still rippling through America today. 

The Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts is presented annually to someone who has rendered notable service to the arts in this country. Elizabeth LeCompte, the visionary composer, designer, and director, has been a titanic force in experimental theater and performance for over fifty years. A founding member of the Wooster Group and a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, she has been creating radical, complexly wrought works of theater since the 1970s, firmly establishing herself as a luminary in the field.

The awards will be presented alongside the architecture, art, literature, and music awards at Arts and Letters’s annual Ceremonial in May.

Founded in 1898, the American Academy of Arts and Letters represents the highest standards of artistic achievement in this country, and our community of members are among the leading contemporary architects, visual artists, writers, and composers. Arts and Letters honors creative accomplishment through the election of members, the conferment of awards, and presenting public exhibitions and interdisciplinary programs at our historic buildings in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City.

Media Inquiries
Hanna Graybill
(212) 368-5900
hgraybill@artsandletters.org