American Federation of Arts
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AFA Logo
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| Established | 1909 |
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| Location | 305 East 47th Street 10th Floor New York, NY |
| Director | Pauline Willis |
| Website | www.afaweb.org |
The American Federation of Arts (AFA) is a nonprofit organization that organizes art exhibitions for presentation in museums around the world, publishes exhibition catalogues, and develops education programs. The organization’s founding in 1909 was endorsed by Theodore Roosevelt and spearheaded by Secretary of State Elihu Root and eminent art patrons and artists of the day. The AFA’s mission is to enrich the public’s experience and understanding of the visual arts, and this is accomplished through its exhibitions, catalogues, and public programs. To date, the AFA has organized or circulated approximately 3,000 exhibitions that have been viewed by more than 10 million people in museums in every state, as well as in Canada, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa.
The AFA was founded on May 12, 1909.
At a meeting on May 11, 1909, convened by the National Academy of Art’s Board of Regents—among whom were President William Howard Taft, former president Theodore Roosevelt, Cecilia Beaux, Robert Woods Bliss, William Merritt Chase, Robert W. de Forest, Homer Saint-Gaudens, Charles L. Hutchinson, Archer M. Huntington, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Leila Mechlin, Andrew W. Mellon, J. Pierpont Morgan, Francis D. Millet, Secretary of State Elihu Root, and Henry Walters, among others— Elihu Root called for the formation of an agency that would send “exhibitions of original works of art on tour to the hinterlands of the United States.” With the unanimous endorsement of Root’s motion by representatives from more than eighty American art institutions—among them, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the American Academy in Rome—the AFA was founded on May 12, 1909. The organization’s founders further agreed to hold annual meetings and devote themselves to promoting the visual arts as a vital component of the nation’s cultural life. Hutchinson, who at the time was the President of the Art Institute of Chicago, was elected the organization's first president.
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