The Académie des Beaux-Arts (French pronunciation: [akademi de boz‿aʁ]; lit. 'Academy of Fine Arts') is a French learned society based in Paris. It is one of the five academies of the Institut de France. As of 2025, the president of the academy is Coline Serreau, a French actress and film director.
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Background
The academy was created in 1816 in Paris as a merger of the Académie de peinture et de sculpture (Academy of Painting and Sculpture, founded 1648), the Académie de musique (Academy of Music, founded in 1669) and the Académie d'architecture (Academy of Architecture, founded in 1671).
Awards
Currently, the Académie des Beaux-Arts provides several awards including five dedicated prizes:
Liliane Bettencourt Prize for Choral Singing
Simone and Cino Del Duca Foundation Prize for Music
Pierre Cardin Prize for Design
François-Victor Noury Prize
Fondation Pierre Gianadda Prize
Previously the Académie granted the Prix Rossini for excellence in libretto or music composition.
Members
Constituted around the notion of multidisciplinarity, the Académie des Beaux-Arts brings together sixty-three members within nine artistic sections, sixteen foreign associate members and sixty-three corresponding members.
The members are grouped into nine sections:
Section I: Painting
Section II: Sculpture
Section III: Architecture
Section IV: Engraving
Section V: Musical composition
Section VI: Unattached (Free) members
Section VII: Artistic creation in the cinema and audio-visual fields (since 1985)
Section VIII: Photography (since 2005)
Section IX: Choreography (since 2018)
Current members: