American Federation of Arts history

In 1910, the AFA promoted the creation of a National Commission of Fine Arts, which was subsequently established by an act of congress to advise the government on matters of art and design as they pertain to the nation’s capital.

The National League of Handicraft Societies merged with the AFA in 1912, and constituent societies were made AFA members.

In 1913, the AFA opened its first New York office in the Fine Arts Building at 215 West 57th Street.

Mechlin, art critic at The Washington Star, was the magazine’s founding editor and continued in the role through 1931.

Beginning in 1952, the AFA relocated its headquarters, moving from Washington, D.C. to New York, renting offices at 1083 Fifth Avenue.

In 1959, the AFA co-sponsored the first art film festival in the United States—Films on Art Festival, in Woodstock, New York, with the Woodstock Artists Association, the College Art Association, Hunter College, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In 1969, the AFA established Circulating Films on Art, thus becoming the first organization of its kind to circulate such films for rent.

In 1976, the AFA organized the first curatorially selected international traveling film exhibition, A History of the American Avant-Garde Cinema.

In addition to its traveling video selections from the Whitney, in 1983, the AFA began organizing independent traveling video exhibitions, the first of which included American Documentary Video: Subject to Change; New Video: Japan; and Revisiting Romance: New Feminist Video.

In 1987, the AFA’s merger with the Art Museum Association of America (AMAA) brought together the two oldest nonprofit art museum organizations in America, creating a larger national organization that could offer a comprehensive set of services without duplication.

In 1990, the AFA closed its West Coast office and moved the Museum Services Department to its New York headquarters.

In 1994, the AFA inaugurated the Directors Forum, a two-and-a-half-day annual conference for museum directors that featured panel discussions with some of the most distinguished professionals in the art world.

Building upon the success of that program, the AFA began, in 2001, a similar conference for art museum curators.

Beginning in 2005, the Directors Forum is now an annual program of the independent Art Museum Partnership.

In 2007, the AFA sold its townhouse at 41 East 65th Street and moved to its current location at 305 East 47th Street.