The Society of Illustrators is a Manhattan-based membership organization founded in 1901 by nine artists, including Frank Vincent DuMond, Albert Sterner, and Reginald Birch, to promote the art of illustration and hold exhibitions. It has been headquartered on East 63rd Street since 1939 and operates the Museum of American Illustration on site, opened to the public in 1981, which holds a permanent collection of nearly 2,500 works by illustrators including Norman Rockwell and Howard Pyle. In 2012 the society absorbed the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, broadening its focus to include comics. It continues to mount annual exhibitions, scholarship competitions, and its Hall of Fame program, established in 1958.