MADE AT YADDO
“The 40[0] or so acres on which the studios and principal buildings of Yaddo stand have seen more distinguished activity in the arts than any other piece of ground in the English-speaking community or perhaps in the entire world.” —John Cheever, 1968
At the start of the 20th century, America’s cultural critics focused on the project of defining, supporting, and affirming an emerging national culture. While America had once looked toward the European continent for cultural values, groundbreaking literary and cultural critics such as Lewis Mumford, Van Wyck Brooks, Newton Arvin, Malcolm Cowley, Alfred Kazin, and others sought ways to foster an American cultural identity. Yaddo’s work of supporting artists converged with this national project. Collectively, artists who have worked at Yaddo have to date garnered 63 Pulitzer Prizes, 58 National Book Awards, 24 MacArthur “genius” awards, a Nobel Prize, and countless other honors.
Countless visual artists, among them Clyfford Still, Milton Avery, Anne Truitt, Beauford Delaney, Martin Puryear, and George Rickey found their work shaped by Yaddo stays. Poets from Marya Zaturenska to Sylvia Plath found inspiration in Yaddo’s gardens. Composers from Leonard Bernstein to Marc Blitzstein found the time to score operas in Yaddo’s quietude. Novelists Saul Bellow, Carson McCullers, Katherine Anne Porter, Eudora Welty, and Philip Roth developed some of their most important characters during Yaddo stays. And these characters have come to life not simply on the printed page, but also through the films they inspired.
Yaddo, together with the thousands of artists who have worked there, has played a pivotal role in the making of American culture.