Across Borders and Time: International Arts Residencies

Nika Mušič

Artist-in-residence (AiR) programmes are organised temporal and/or spatial opportunities that allow artists and creators from the cultural and creative sectors to focus on the research or production process. The role of these programmes in an artist's development and practice is paramount, but they do not merely provide infrastructure for an individual's artistic engagement. By placing the artist in a specific spatial and/or temporal context, AiR programmes inevitably connect him/her to the environment and communities. In this way, they develop into intensive opportunities for intercultural encounters and dialogue, the exchange of information and the acquisition of skills and knowledge. AiR programmes are thus also meeting points, catalysts of creativity in a community and drivers of social sustainability. They can help revitalise local creativity, encourage social cohesion and enhance care for the built and natural environment. To better understand their role today, this article traces their development across different historical periods and contexts.

Just a Trend of Our Era?

The prevalence and diversity of AiR programmes create the impression that they represent a fad of our time, whose beginning and perhaps even ending are rooted in globalisation. One gets the impression that, on the one hand, programmes only started emerging with the affordability of passenger transport and with digital information about international opportunities, and on the other hand, that they are likely to die out (or at least significantly transform) due to the pandemic, digital connectivity and growing virtual worlds.

However, this impression is misleading. AiR programmes, albeit in a slightly different form, date back to the 16th century. Moreover, although virtual residencies are one of the possibilities introduced by the pandemic, the mobility of artists – judging by the responses of artists and AiR organisers – is not something that can easily and desirably be placed within virtual frameworks.

From Renaissance Origins to Contemporary Innovations

The Beginnings of International Artist Hosting

In Western culture, changes in the conception of the artist – who was no longer just a craftsman but an intellectual with an impact on the environment – laid the foundations for institutionalised artist hosting as early as Renaissance Italy. Giorgio Vasari proposed to Cosimo I de' Medici the establishment of an Academy of Art and Design, which would include a residency in Rome to allow artists to broaden their horizons.

In the second half of the 17th century, France’s Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture offered the state-funded Prix de Rome scholarship, which enabled artists to live for 3 to 5 years in major arts centres – first in Rome and later in Venice. During the reign of Louis XIV, the scholarship was intended for visual artists and sculptors, but over time, it was gradually extended to architecture, music and engraving. Anyone selected for the residency was officially recognised as an artist and was required to deliver an artwork as the outcome of the residency.

At the beginning of the 19th century, young painters from the German-speaking world established an anti-academic movement called the Brotherhood of Saint Luke. They rejected Neoclassicism and sought to restore religiosity to art. Seeking inspiration from late medieval and early Renaissance artists, some of them moved to Rome. This is one of the international artists' retreats for educational and creative purposes.

Artists' Colonies of the Late 19th Century

At the end of the 19th century, artists began to move en masse from urban centres to the countryside in the spirit of nostalgia for the primordial and non-artificial. Thus, informal artists' colonies emerged in villages, bringing together international artists from various fields. These predecessors of contemporary artist-in-residence centres differed in duration and size. Some were temporary or transient colonies (e.g., Giverny) with varying numbers of artists who often settled there only for the summer. Others (e.g., Barbizon) had more permanent visiting artists, as well as artists who established homes and studios there. Still others were stable colonies (e.g., Egmond and Worpswede) with many permanently settled artists.

Artists who gathered in these colonies were typically interested in the spirit of the place and in creating outdoors. Two directions can be observed in their work: exploring disappearing ways of life and creating new ways of experiencing nature. Most of the colonies were concentrated in the Netherlands, France and Germany. The colony in Dachau was frequented by German modernists from Munich, who had a strong influence on central Slovenian Impressionists, such as Matija Jama and Matej Sternen.

Artists' colonies also appeared elsewhere in Europe, the United States (e.g., Taos, Santa Fe), and Australia. In the United States and the United Kingdom, art-loving patrons provided individual artists with secluded residences, which was perceived as a new kind of romantic patronage.

Avant-Garde Communities

Contemporary arts residencies were also influenced by the avant-garde movements of the first decades of the 20th century, which, in a period of nationalism and restricted mobility, sought to transcend national borders with a shared intellectual space. Cosmopolitan artists' communities emerged in European cities, and international collectives such as the Bauhaus established their own spaces for production and collaboration.

After World War II, many European artists emigrated to the United States, which encouraged the development of new AiR programmes, among which the Summer Art Institute at Black Mountain College (1944–1956) stood out as a collective laboratory for experimental art. Young artists and teachers lived together in a community and developed new models of collaboration or collective artistic creation – the "happening". A similar spirit later characterised New York's PS1, a complex of studios and exhibition spaces, as well as Berlin's Künstlerhaus Bethanien. Those institutions significantly influenced the structure and conceptual design of today's AiR programmes.

New Models Between Utopia and Social Engagement

In the 1960s, three new models of AiR programmes emerged in relation to social critique. One allowed artists to create their own utopias by breaking away from bourgeois society. In contrast, the second aimed to encourage social interaction by involving the public and established studios in villages and cities as points of political and social change. The third model consisted of AiR programmes that were artist-initiated and led.

The third model – i.e., artist-driven initiatives – was characterised by the expansion of artistic boundaries in this period, the merging of living and working spaces and the consequent shift from individual to collective artistic production. Artists used institutional critique to question their relationship with art organisations. AiR initiatives, for example, included exhibition spaces for artists and their international colleagues as alternatives to formal gallery spaces.

In a broader context, the British organisation Artist Placement Group, founded in the 1960s by artists Barbara Steveni and John Latham, is interesting as it placed artists in various work and social environments. Thus, artists were not obliged to create artworks but rather to collaborate with organisations in a way that could influence their development. Artists' initiatives in the 1970s, when artists occupied houses in response to shortcomings and barriers in the institutionalised art landscape, were also significant.

In the 1970s and 1980s, many new AiR initiatives arose based on these models, challenging the binary oppositions of public/private, art/life and autonomy/instrumentalisation.

Expansion Through Globalisation

With economic liberalisation, technological advances and increased global mobility, international exchange became easier at the end of the 1980s and in the 1990s, leading to the flourishing of AiR programmes. Becoming increasingly visible and accessible to artists and creators worldwide, diverse programmes were not only confined to the West but appeared in South America, Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia.

In 1992, the Citizen Exchange Council (CEC) established the ArtsLink Awards, intended for artists from the newly independent countries of the former Soviet Union as well as from Eastern and Central Europe. The programme (later replaced by ArtsLink International Fellowship) enabled residency stays in the United States and became an important platform for Slovenian artists as well. Among them, Sanja Nešković was hosted by the Cunningham Dance Foundation in 1998.

During this period, programmes based on local initiatives gained momentum, establishing locally embedded alternative centres of artistic exchange. Such centres promoted the development of the local art scene while connecting it to the global art space.

Professionalisation and New Approaches

Not only did the AiR phenomenon expand in the 21st century, driven by affordable passenger transport, the internet and social media, but also the very notion of AiR itself has been consolidated. More than a trend, it has become an indispensable (professional) opportunity for artists to develop, operate and network. Therefore, the presence of AiR programmes in the art world is essential. In the spirit of this understanding, AiR organisers began to network, also drawing in other stakeholders (e.g., governments, foundations, organisations). With higher-quality programmes came more selective application processes, meaning that applicants must compete more intensely.

At the same time, the general acceptance and formal consolidation of AiR programmes give rise to a desire for something more alternative and unconventional; new models emerge, some even less visible and less accessible (e.g., nomadic projects). On the one hand, artists connect globally through temporary residency exchanges. On the other hand, some artists are turning to their own communities to organise working periods within them, in their home cities.

A Turn from "How" to "What"

Over the past 15 years, the focus of AiR programme organisers has shifted from operational and structural dilemmas to deeper inquiries into content and purpose. Whereas organisers previously concentrated mainly on facilitating programmes, leaving artists to shape their residency experience and fill it with content, both hosts and guests are now interested in what the programme has to offer (beyond mere logistical support). This turn has led to an increase in the number of both thematic and research-oriented AiR programmes, where socially and culturally relevant themes are at the forefront of the agenda.

International arts residencies have evolved from being mere spaces for artistic production to platforms for knowledge development and interdisciplinary collaboration. Artists from various fields are connecting with one another, and other sectors (e.g., science) are also connecting with artists and creators to stimulate innovation and add different perspectives and new forms of collaboration to their work.

Author bio

Nika Mušič has a background in comparative literature and many years of experience in publishing, where she worked as an editor in the field of contemporary and children's literature, as well as a proofreader and literary critic. Since 2024, she has been employed at Motovila (CED Slovenia), fostering cooperation in the cultural and creative sectors.

The text was written in January 2025 in the framework of the public procurement "Development and upgrade of information portals of the Ministry of Culture for the transition to the eKultura platform" in which Motovila Institute collaborates as a partner with Ljudmila Art and Science Laboratory.

External links

The primary sources for the historical overview and information on various periods:

Additional sources: