On June 1952, the American Council of Learned Societies discontinued its Committee on Renaissance Studies, but before this Committee disbanded it voted to organize a new committee to take over its work. This new committee, the American Committee on Renaissance Studies (ACRS), consisted of representatives of national learned societies with interests in the Renaissance, together with representatives of the local Renaissance clubs and conferences which had been formed under the old ACLS Committee.

The first meeting of the ACRS was held by invitation of the Columbia University Seminar on the Renaissance in the Paterno Library of the Casa Italiana, on January 31, 1953.