Yaddo is an artists' community located on a estate in

Saratoga Springs, New York Saratoga Springs is a Administrative divisions of New York#City, city in Saratoga County, New York, United States. The population was 28,491 at the United States Census 2020, 2020 census. The name reflects the presence of mineral springs in the ...

. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment.". On March 11, 2013 it was designated a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a National Register of Historic Places property types, building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the Federal government of the United States, United States government f ...

. It offers residencies to artists working in choreography, film, literature, musical composition, painting, performance art, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and video. Collectively, artists who have worked at Yaddo have won 82 Pulitzer Prizes, 34 MacArthur Fellowships, 70 National Book Awards, 24

National Book Critics Circle Award The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".Rome Prizes, 49 Whiting Writers' Awards, a Nobel Prize (

Saul Bellow Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; June 10, 1915April 5, 2005) was a Canadian-American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the 1976 Nobel Prize in Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only write ...

, who won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and

Nobel Prize in Literature The Nobel Prize in Literature, here meaning ''for'' Literature (), is a Swedish literature prize that is awarded annually, since 1901, to an author from any country who has, in the words of the will of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, "in ...

in 1976), at least one

Man Booker Prize The Booker Prize, formerly the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a prestigious literary award conferred each year for the best single work of sustained fiction written in the English language, wh ...

( Alan Hollinghurst, 2004) and countless other honors. Yaddo is included in the Union Avenue Historic District.

History

The estate was purchased in 1881 by the financier Spencer Trask and his wife, the writer Katrina Trask. The first mansion on the property burned down in 1891, and the Trasks then built the current house. Yaddo is a

neologism In linguistics, a neologism (; also known as a coinage) is any newly formed word, term, or phrase that has achieved popular or institutional recognition and is becoming accepted into mainstream language. Most definitively, a word can be considered ...

invented by one of the Trask children and was meant to rhyme with "shadow".

Artists' colony

In 1900, after the premature deaths of the Trasks' four children, Spencer Trask decided to turn the estate into an artists' retreat as a gift to his wife. He did this with the financial assistance of

philanthropist Philanthropy is a form of altruism that consists of "private initiatives for the public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private good, focusing on material ...

George Foster Peabody George Foster Peabody (; July 27, 1852 – March 4, 1938) was an American banker and philanthropist. Early life He was born to George Henry Peabody and Elvira Peabody (''née'' Canfield) as the first of four children. Both parents were New En ...

. The first artists arrived in 1926. The success of Yaddo encouraged Spencer and Katrina later to donate land for a working women's retreat center as well, known as Wiawaka Holiday House, at the request of Mary Wiltsie Fuller. At least in its early years, Yaddo was funded by profits from the Bowling Green Offices Building in Manhattan, in which Spencer Trask was extensively involved. In 1949 during the McCarthy Era, a news story accurately accused writer Agnes Smedley of spying for the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. Smedley had traveled with

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; traditionally Romanization of Chinese, romanised as Mao Tse-tung. (26December 18939September 1976) was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and political theorist who founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in ...

to report on the Chinese Communist Revolution and, beginning in 1943, had spent five years at Yaddo. Poet

Robert Lowell Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV (; March 1, 1917 – September 12, 1977) was an American poet. He was born into a Boston Brahmin family that could trace its origins back to the ''Mayflower''. His family, past and present, were important subjects ...

pushed the Board of Directors to oust Yaddo's director, Elizabeth Ames, who was being questioned by the

FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...

. Ames was eventually exonerated of all charges but learned from the investigation that her assistant Mary Townsend was an FBI informant. Ames remained director until her retirement in 1969, having overseen the Yaddo community from its creation in 1924. Ames was succeeded by Newman E. Waite who served as president from 1969 until 1977 when Curtis Harnack assumed the position. Literary critic and eventual Yaddo board member Louis Kronenberger wrote in his memoir that to call Yaddo "a mixture of some of the most attractive, enjoyable, generous-minded people and of others who were weird, megalomaniac, intransigent, pugnacious is only to say that it has housed and nourished most of the finest talents in the arts of the past forty-odd years—the immensely fruitful years of Elizabeth Ames's directorship."

Recent years

In May 2005, vandals, using

paintball Paintball is a competitive sport, competitive team sport, team shooting sport in which players eliminate opponents from play by hitting them with spherical dye-filled gelatin capsules called Paintball equipment#Paintballs, paintballs that b ...

guns, damaged two of the Four Seasons statues, the Poet's Bench, a fountain, and pathways with blue paint. Repairs cost $1,400. In 2018, Yaddo elected photographer Peter Kayafas and novelist Janice Y.K. Lee as co-chairs of its board of directors. Yaddo has received large contributions from Spencer Trask & Company and Kevin Kimberlin, the firm's current chairman. Novelist

Patricia Highsmith Patricia Highsmith (born Mary Patricia Plangman; January 19, 1921 – February 4, 1995) was an American novelist and short story writer widely known for her psychological thrillers, including her series of five novels featuring the character T ...

bequeathed her estate, valued at $3 million, to the community.

Facilities and gardens

Yaddo's gardens are modeled after the classical Italian gardens the Trasks had visited in Europe. The Four Seasons statues were acquired and installed in the garden in 1909."At Yaddo, statues truly are for all seasons,"
''Daily Gazette''

Schenectady, New York Schenectady ( ) is a City (New York), city in Schenectady County, New York, United States, of which it is the county seat. As of the United States Census 2020, 2020 census, the city's population of 67,047 made it the state's ninth-most populo ...

, January 21, 2017. There are many statues and sculptures located within the estate, including a sundial that bears the inscription, "Hours fly, Flowers die, New days, New ways, Pass by, Love stays." While visitors are not admitted to the main mansion or artists' residences, they may visit the gardens.

Alumni artists-in-residence

Yaddo has hosted more than 6,000 artists including: * Ayad Akhtar *

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* Michael Ashkin * Newton Arvin *

Milton Avery Milton Clark Avery (; March 7, 1885 – January 3, 1965Haskell, B. (2003). "Avery, Milton". Grove Art Online.) was an American Modern art, modern painter. Born in Altmar, New York, he moved to Connecticut in 1898 and later to New York City. He wa ...

* Annie Baker * James Baldwin * Louise Belcourt *

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* Elizabeth Bishop * James L. Brooks * Sharon Butler *

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* Raymond Carver * Jordan Casteel * Rebecca Chace *

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* Ta-Nehisi Coates *

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* Jennifer Croft * Roger Crossgrove * Beauford Delaney * Samuel R. Delany * Arthur Deshaies * Blane De St. Croix * Sari Dienes * John Dilg * Torkwase Dyson * Mary Beth Edelson * Jonathan Elliott * Kenneth Fearing * Gladys Fornell * Jonathan Franzen *

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* William Gass * Steve Giovinco * Keli Goff * Jason Grote * Philip Guston * Daron Hagen * Michael Harrison * Ruth Heller * Sabine Heinlein *

* Chester Himes * Marilyn Gayle Hoff * Langston Hughes *

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* X. J. Kennedy * Jeanne Jaffe *

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* Ulysses Kay * Porochista Khakpour * Wlodzimierz Ksiazek * Louis Kronenberger * Stanley Kunitz * Penny Lane * James Lapine * Jacob Lawrence * Young Jean Lee * Alan Lelchuk *

* Grace Lumpkin * Alison Lurie * Carmen Maria Machado * Rosemary Mahoney *

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* Cassandra Medley * Melissa Meyer * Honor Molloy *

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* Carl Rakosi * Tom Raworth *

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* Esther Rolick *

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* Philip Roth *

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* Sarah Schulman * Delmore Schwartz * Ann Loomis Silsbee * Michael Simms * Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones *

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* Stephanie Strickland *

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* Virgil Thomson * Colm Tóibín * Lionel Trilling * Anne Truitt * Byron Vazakas *

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* Eudora Welty * Chloé Zhao

In popular culture

Jonathan Ames' book ''Wake Up Sir!'' (2004) is partially set at Yaddo. ''Dagger of the Mind'' (1941), a novel by 1930s Yaddo resident Kenneth Fearing, takes place in Demarest Hall, an art colony modeled after Yaddo. In ''You'' season 1, episode 8: "You Got Me Babe", Blythe helps Beck focus on writing and break through writer's block by disconnecting Beck from her cellphone and the Internet, and setting up Beck's apartment to make her "own Yaddo". Yaddo is mentioned repeatedly throughout the Theresa Rebeck play ''

Seminar A seminar is a form of academic instruction, either at an academic institution or offered by a commercial or professional organization. It has the function of bringing together small groups for recurring meetings, focusing each time on some part ...

''. In the 2018 Netflix comedy-drama '' Private Life'', aspiring writer Sadie (played by Kayli Carter) gets the opportunity to spend a month at Yaddo to focus on refining her writing skills. It is also repeatedly mentioned and referenced throughout the movie, e.g. by a coffee mug showing the Yaddo name on it. A few scenes of the movie are set at Yaddo's location as well. Mentioned in the Showtime series '' The Affair'' season 2, episode 11 where Noah Solloway's agent offers to set him up at Yaddo to write his second novel. Yaddo is mentioned in the final episode (season 7, episode 12) of ‘’Younger’’ when Liza submits Charles’ book secretly and he is accepted. The show ends with him promoting her to move on to become a writer and accept his stay at Yaddo.

References

External links

* * {{Authority control American art Artist residencies 1926 establishments in New York (state) Saratoga Springs, New York Artist colonies Tourist attractions in Saratoga Springs, New York National Historic Landmarks in New York (state) National Register of Historic Places in Saratoga County, New York