The Polish Institute of Arts & Sciences of America has been set up in New York in 1942. It was founded by six members of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (PAU) - Bronislaw Malinowski, Oskar Halecki, Jan Kucharzewski, Waclaw Lednicki, Wojciech Swietoslawski and Rafal Taubenschlag who found refuge in the USA after the outbrake of WWII. Their main aim was to establish a continuity of Polish intellectual and cultural life by organizing 'an American station of PAU, the most prestigious Polish learned institution that had been closed down by German nazis'.The article presents several fields of activities of the Institute since its foundation until today