Funded by generous bequests from Eleanor D. Popper, a former student of the School, and author Geoffrey Wagner in memory of his wife, Colleen Browning Wagner, an American realist painter and National Academician (NA), the National Academy’s newly renovated spaces opened September 2011. The renovation revitalized the Academy’s entrance on Fifth Avenue and included a new student and faculty galleries, enhanced the second and fourth floor galleries and expanded the public assembly space. The renovation was conceived to encourage interaction with the public, honor the history of the Academy while reorienting it as a thriving, outward-facing institution.

A building committee, headed by architect Bruce Fowle, NA, of FXFOWLE Architects, President of the Academy, oversaw the renovations, and was designed by the architecture firm of Bade Stageberg Cox.

The Academy’s renovation takes its aesthetic inspiration from the original Huntington Mansion, a graceful Beaux Arts building located on Manhattan’s Museum Mile on Fifth Avenue.

Conceptually, the renovations emphasize the intimate sensibility and domestic scale of the mansion, while creating a dynamic, twenty-first century experience for visitors.