Gold Medal and Laurel Wreath of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal

In 1933, Secretary of the Academy of Arts and Letters, Robert Underwood Johnson, protested the nomination of Carl Sandburg into this elite society, calling for the exclusion of "rebel poets and cubist painters." Ironically, Sandburg was later awarded this Gold Medal from The Academy of Arts and Letters, albeit for history and biography, not poetry, in 1952.