The signet society medal for achievement in the arts

Typically awarded to a former undergraduate member of the Signet Society, this honor recognizes an individual who has made notable achievement in the arts. Recipients are presented with the Signet Society Medal for Achievement in the Arts at the Society’s Annual Dinner each April. The medal is embossed in fine silver and was designed in 1937 by Nathaniel Choate, Signet Class of 1922.

Signet Society Medalists

Year/Name
2024 Matthew Aucoin ’12
2023 James Fallows ’70
2022 Nicholas Britell ’03 and Agnes Chu ’02 and Natalie Portman ’03
2021 no medals awarded
2020 no medals awarded
2019 Holland Cotter ’70
2018 Dorothy Shore Zinberg and Michael Friedman ’97 (posthumously)
2017 Whit Stillman ’73
2016 Rod Nordland
2015 Robert Levin ’68
2014 Kurt Andersen ’76
2013 Amy Brenneman ’86
2012 Rashida Jones ’97
2011 Myra Mayman
2010 Jill Abramson ’76
2009 Hendrik Hertzberg ’65
2008 Walter Issacson ’74
2007 Frank Rich ’71
2006 Richard Wilbur A.M. ’47 and C. Douglas Dillon ’31 (posthumously) and David Rockefeller ’36
2005 Stanley Cavell
2004 Helen Vendler Ph.D. ’70
2003 John Lithgow ’67
2002 André Bishop ’70
2001 John Ashbery ’49
2000 Tommy Lee Jones ’69
1999 Kenneth Koch ’48
1998 Daniel Rogers Pinkham, Jr. ’43
1997 Donald Hall ’51
1996 Seamus Heaney
1995 Edward Larrabee Barnes ’38
1994 Norman K. Mailer ’43
1993 The Rev. Peter J. Gomes
1992 Harold Brodsky ’51
1991 Isaiah Jackson ’66 and Yo-Yo Ma ’76
1990 Luise Vosgerchian A.M. ’71
1989 Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr. ’38
1988 William Alfred A.M. ’49 Ph.D. ’54
1987 John Carter Brown ’56
1986 Agnes Mongan
1985 Mason Hammond ’25 and Elliot Forbes A.M. ’40
1984 James Laughlin ’36
1983 Joel Cohen A.M. ’65 and Ved Parkash Mehta A.M. ’65
1982 Paul A. Freund LL.B. ’31
1981 George Plimpton ’48
1980 Amyas Ames ’28
1979 Robert Stuart Fitzgerald ’33
1978 Walter Jackson Bate ’39
1977 Roger Sessions
1976 Malcolm Cowley ’19
1975 Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr. ’38
1974 Robert Lowell
1973 Leonard Bernstein ’39
1972 Robert Leacock ’43
1971 John Updike ’54
1970 Archibald MacLeish LL.B. ’19
1969 James Lawrence ’29
1968 John Huston Finley ’25
1967 no medals awarded
1966 Theodore Sizer ’16
1965 John Hall Wheelock ’08
1964 Randall Thompson ’20
1963 Philip Hofer ’21
1962 Gardner Cox ’28
1961 Fred Norris Robinson ’91
1960 Kenneth John Conant ’15
1959 Edward Streeter ’14
1958 Robert Frost ’01
1957 Palfrey Perkins ’05
1956 John Mason Brown ’23 and Bernard DeVoto ’18 (posthumously)
1955 Edward Augustus Weeks ’22
1954 Langdon Warner ’03
1953 David Thompson Watson McCord ’21
1952 Walter Dumaux Edmonds ’26
1951 William James ’03
1950 Paul Joseph Sachs ’00 and Thomas Stearns Eliot ’10
1949 Edward Ballantine ’07
1948 Frederick Lewis Allen ’12
1947 Mark Anthony De Wolfe Howe ’87
1946 no medals awarded
1945 no medals awarded
1944 no medals awarded
1943 no medals awarded
1942 Edward Kennard Rand ’94
1941 Archibald Thompson Davison ’06
1940 Robert Emmet Sherwood ’18 and The Elizabethan Club of Yale University
1939 Gluyas Williams ’11
1938 Van Wyck Brooks ’08
1937 Samuel Eliot Morison ’08