[2] While the group was working out an organizational plan, Charles DeKay, the literary and art critic of the New York Times for 18 years, returned from a diplomatic post abroad.

Among the artists of the period, earlier charter members, or those joined in the early days of the club were Frederic Remington, William Merritt Chase, Robert Henri, and George Bellows.

Because it accepted both men and women, the club was a rousing success and its tight quarters on 34th street could barely keep up with the demand for new membership.

[3] Walter Leighton Clark, patron and founder of the Grand Central Art Galleries, became a life member in 1907, and was joined by others in his artistic, business and social circles.

It initially purchased a building next door to the original clubhouse but, in 1906, the club found an opportunity to move into a new space: the Samuel Tilden Mansion.

Since 1906 the organization has occupied the Samuel J. Tilden House, a landmarked Victorian Gothic Revival[11] brownstone at 15 Gramercy Park, next door to The Players, a club with similar interests.

During the 2006 restoration of the Tilden mansion's stoop, the Brazilian New York City artist Sergio Rossetti Morosini has now sculpted a bust of Michelangelo above the front door on the building's façade.

Artists represented in the collection include Daniel Putnam Brinley, Charles Courtney Curran, Daniel Garber, Philip Leslie Hale, Gari Melchers, William McGregor Paxton, Robert Spencer, Harry Willson Watrous, Robert Vonnoh, Everett Longley Warner, Robert Henri, Homer Boss, F. Luis Mora, Eugene Speicher, Jerry Farnsworth, Lamarr Dodd, Birge Harrison, Paul Cornoyer, Malvina Hoffman, Anna Hyatt Huntington, Lee Lawrie, Paul Manship, Victor Brenner, Will Barnet, Chen Chi, Peter Cox, Gary Erbe, Diana Kan, Everett Raymond Kinstler, Greg Wyatt, Carlos Quintana, Kendall Shaw, and Lois Dodd.

[20] Works by Pablo Picasso, Joan Míro, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Lissa Rivera, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, and many other renowned artists have been featured in the space.

At its founding, the New York Times remarked: "This club differs from the others in several ways, especially in the fact that it has a very serious purpose, namely to encourage the arts side of American manufactures.

Among the distinguished painters who have been members are Robert Henri, Leon Dabo, Edward Charles Volkert, Frederic Remington, William Merritt Chase, Richard C. Pionk, Chen Chi, Larry Rivers, Louise Upton Brumback, Cecilia Beaux, Will Barnet, Everett Raymond Kinstler, and Michael Cheval.

The membership of the National Arts Club has included three Presidents of the United States: Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Dwight Eisenhower along with Senator William A.

Recipients of the award include WH Auden, Anthony Burgess, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, Allen Ginsberg, John Updike, Marguerite Yourcenar, Iris Murdoch, Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, Arthur Miller, Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, Nadine Gordimer, Tom Wolfe, Chinua Achebe, Don DeLillo, Joyce Carol Oates, Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, John Ashbery, Leonard Bernstein, Alice Tully, Avery Fisher, Amyas Ames and the New York Philharmonic, Frederica von Stade, Benny Goodman, Isaac Stern, James Levine, Plácido Domingo, Itzhak Perlman, Paddy Moloney, Byron Janis, Ilse Bing, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, John Szarkowski, Inge Morath, George Kalinsky, R. Buckminster Fuller, I.M.

Pei, Daniel Libeskind, Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, Robert A. Stern, Eleanor Roosevelt, Salvador Dalí, Chen Chi, Louise Nevelson, Stewart Klonis and The Art Students League, Louise Bourgeois, Robert Rauschenberg, Will Barnet, Christo, Roy Lichtenstein, Dale Chihuly, Chuck Close, James Turrell, James Moody, Ed Ruscha, Spike Lee, Whoopi Goldberg, Richard Dreyfuss, John Turturro, Lynn Redgrave, Olympia Dukakis, Ang Lee, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Claire Bloom, Ellen Burstyn, Patricia Field, Jack O'Brien, Paul Auster, William Ivey Long, Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and Anna Sui.