The American Academy of the Fine Arts was an art institution founded in 1802 in New York City, to encourage appreciation and teaching of the classical style.[1] It exhibited copies of classical works and encouraged artists to emulate the classical in their work.[2] Richard Varick, the mayor of New York, and Gulian Verplanck, a New York politician, were some of the academy's original organizers.[3] Younger artists grew increasingly restive under its constraint, and in 1825 left to found the National Academy of Design.