A new generalized conforming quadrilateral membrane element is developed by introducing additional rigid vertex rotational freedoms to the normal 4node quadrilateral membrane element. The rotational stiffness of the present element is not zero so that the singularity of the stiffness matrix is avoided. Numerical analysis of the Cook problem cantilever beam shows that the EAE/Mem element passes the patch test and possesses good convergence, reliability, and precision without a zero energy mode. It provides a lockfree solution to the MacNeal beam problem. Numerical results also show that the EAE/Mem element is insensitive to mesh distortion. The results demonstrate that the generalized conforming technique is an efficient tool for developing high performance finite element models.