The Club
The Arts Club of Washington has kept the James Monroe House since 1916 - and kept it full of artists.
Since 1916
Founded in April 1916, the Arts Club of Washington is the oldest nonprofit arts organization in the nation's capital - and it was ahead of its time from the first day: the first club in Washington to admit men and women equally, with no membership restrictions of race, ethnicity, or religion. That founding spirit is this competition's spirit.
The club brings together persons devoted to the arts - architecture, cinematography, dance, drama, literature, music, painting, photography, and sculpture - and this scholarship rotates through those art forms, year by year.
The house
Built around 1805 for the Philadelphia merchant Timothy Caldwell, the red brick Federal townhouse at 2017 I Street NW became the home of James Monroe in 1811. When Monroe was inaugurated the nation's fifth President in March 1817, the house served as the official Presidential residence while the White House was restored after the War of 1812 - his first Inaugural Ball was held in the second-floor parlor. Later it was home to Cleveland Abbe, founder of the National Weather Service. It is a National Historic Landmark, and since 1916 it has belonged to the arts.
Winning films are screened in the Monroe Gallery, which seats 120; the annual reception spills into the parlors and the walled garden.
The fund
The competition is made possible through the generosity of the Ann Bartsch Dunne Scholarship Fund and individual donors - club members and friends who believe the next generation of artists is worth investing in.
The scholarship mark itself is drawn from the club's own century-old crest: the arched window, the interlaced script - every curve is the club's own line.
