Arts and Letters

NEW YORK, AUGUST 6, 2026 – The American Academy of Arts and Letters will open its fall exhibitions on September 26, 2026. The new season is one of collaboration, play, and worldmaking.

Arakawa and Madeline Gins: The Poetic Jump
For nearly five decades, Arakawa (b. 1936, Nagoya, Japan; d. 2010) and Madeline Gins (b. 1941, New York; d. 2014) collaborated on works ranging from paintings that map systems of perception, interactive environments, a novelistic biography of Helen Keller, and an ultrachromatic apartment building in Tokyo. The Poetic Jump surveys their personal and creative partnership, and how it led the duo to question “the mistaken concept of the unavoidable death.” The exhibition includes the artists’ large-scale installation Ubiquitous Site X, its first time being shown in the United States. On view through February 7, 2027.

The Game
Over the next year, Christopher Williams (b. 1956, Los Angeles), Monika Baer (b. 1964, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany), Aria Dean (b. 1993, Los Angeles), and Abraham Cruzvillegas (b. 1968, Mexico City) will participate in a series of interlocking shows that unfold like a game of exquisite corpse. Williams makes the opening move. From there, players respond, keeping some of what came before and adding to it. On view through July 2, 2027.

Yoshitaka Amano
Yoshitaka Amano (b. 1952, Shizuoka, Japan) has been drawing for as long as he can remember. The works in this exhibition draw on the visual language he developed creating character illustrations for anime and video games. In them, figures seem to move and drift across the page, opening onto worlds that exist beyond our lived reality. On view through February 7, 2027.

Founded in 1898 and located in landmark buildings in Washington Heights, the American Academy of Arts and Letters is an honor society of artists, architects, composers, and writers who foster and sustain interest in the arts. Arts and Letters’s members honor and support creative individuals through over seventy annual awards and prizes and champion experimentation and the breadth of contemporary art today through an exhibition program that gives artists space, time, and resources to realize ambitious projects. The program is led by Chief Curator Jenny Jaskey, in consultation with a committee of Arts and Letters artist members including Mel Chin, Charles Gaines, Ann Hamilton, Joan Jonas, and Amy Sillman.

The galleries of Arts and Letters are free and open to the public Thursday through Sunday from 12 to 6pm.

Media Inquiries
Stacey Streshinsky
artsandletters@culturalcounsel.com