Yaddo: Shaping the American Century

Yaddo is an artists community located in Saratoga Springs, New York.  In the words of John Cheever, “the forty or so acres on which the studios and principal buildings of Yaddo stand have seen more distinguished activity in the arts that any other piece of ground in the English speaking community.”  Cheever, however, also described Yaddo’s menagerie of creatives as a group of, “lushes down on their luck, men and women at the top of their powers, nervous breakdowns, thieves, geniuses, cranky noblemen, and poets who ate their peas with a knife.”  In total this makes for spectacular drama.  

Historically speaking Yaddo is an idealized synergy of Gilded Age gender roles and is best understood as ½ Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park (“the Menlo Park factory was a loud, rowdy, and raucous place full of nightly sing-alongs around a large organ, gaming, practical jokes, and midnight feasts”) and one half Settlement House (a space where American women, “expropriated the previously male world of literature and the arts as their own, feeling they possessed a special humanistic sensitivity which provided an alternative to the acquisitive and the competitive goals of men in an industrializing America.”).   

Yaddo’s guest list is a “whose who” of American Art and letters.  We will, however,  study Yaddo as a compelling introduction to the shifts, evolutions, and challenges to American art across the 20th century; including: the study of politically radical art during the 1930s and a remarkable study of Cold War era political threats to American creativity with a special focus on the Lavender Scare. 

Because The Yaddo Records (Yaddo’s archive) are at NYPL, and because I served as project archivist for these records we will also spend a day at NYPL that will include introduction to Yaddo’s archive specifically but also to archives more generally.  Finally, we will be visited (either in person or online) from a variety of Yaddo alum who will share their experiences and impressions and answer student questions etc.