The Brooklyn Rail

There is an age-old notion of the artist’s practice as a solitary one in which creativity is born over the course of long hours in the studio. Barring a nomadic or collaborative practice, there is truth to this romantic vision—artists do often work alone—yet there is a constant companion inherent in the creative process: the studio itself. The International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) has filled this role for over two-thousand artists and curators from more than 105 countries over the last thirty years. Founded in Tribeca in 1994 and now based in the East Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, the storied residency program has seen countless influential contemporary artists and curators come through its doors, including artists Claire Fontaine, Theaster Gates, Camille Henrot, and Tatiana Trouvé, as well as curators Mai Abu ElDahab, Stella Fong, and Aneta Szylak. The international residency has been quietly supporting its community for decades, fostering engagement and cultural exchange among residents and with the greater New York area both during residents’ tenures and after their programs end. The more you learn about ISCP, the more its impact across the entire artistic ecosystem becomes apparent, from its residents’ involvement in exhibitions and biennials to their work growing and supporting cultural programs worldwide.

The structure of ISCP is unique. The program acts as a hub where residents typically stay for three months to six months, though they have the option to apply for up to a year. Residents receive a private, furnished studio and robust offering of networking events, such as visits to galleries and institutions in the city and other areas of the Northeast. Each residency is made possible by sponsorships that are established through ISCP’s vast network of supporters and board members, including some who have strong international ties and connections with foreign organizations. Sponsors can be anything from governments, corporations, academic institutions, and foundations, to collectors, galleries, and individuals. The majority of current residencies are funded by Western European sponsors, many supported through public funds. Today, ISCP has over forty partner sponsors.

The residents at ISCP are late-emerging to mid-career, “meaning that at the very least they’ve been included in a few exhibitions at major institutions,” says ISCP Executive Director Susan Hapgood. “I like to call them visionary artists and curators. There is no average resident, every single person is completely different—different ages, ethnicities, cultures, career standings.” ISCP board member Karen Karp adds, “Some artists are well-known in their home countries, but are not established or known in New York. This can be a surprise to them, but it’s an important way to take a step back and think about their career globally.”

Today, ISCP’s impact on the residents’ careers is undeniable, but its success was not born overnight. While ISCP was founded in 1994, the seeds for the program were planted much earlier. Its founder, Dennis Elliott, first arrived in New York in 1973 to become a painter, fresh from earning his MFA at California College of Arts and Crafts and attending the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. “When I came to New York, there were literally thousands of MFAs running around the city,” says Elliott. “It was a time when the art world was very accessible. If you wanted to meet Robert Rauschenberg, you could. It was a cottage industry where younger artists worked for older artists, or galleries and museums. The gentrifiers hadn’t moved in yet, and artists were building lofts for themselves and each other.”

Elliott held jobs in various art institutions, but wanted to create something long term and meaningful, somewhere “for all of these MFA students to take the next step,” he says. When he set out to achieve this, the real estate market in late-1970s/early-1980s New York was evolving dramatically. Areas like SoHo and Tribeca where artists had established illegal lofts—often in spaces they Macgyvered themselves—were swiftly becoming hotbeds for real estate developers looking to attract wealthy tenants. While the so-called 1982 Loft Law protected many of these artists and helped them achieve legal occupancy, affordable studio spaces became increasingly difficult to find by the mid-1990s.

In the two decades after his arrival in the city, Elliott helped to establish and operate four programs for artists and art students in New York that offered subsidized studios and collegial artistic communities, including the studio program for the Alliance of Independent Colleges of Art in 1985 and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Space Program, now called the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, which Elliott helped form in 1991 and worked for over the course of twenty-one years.

At this time in the 1990s, artist residencies were increasingly emerging across the globe for numerous reasons (high rent in areas like New York, optimism towards globalization and the role of culture in society; for a history of artist residencies and how they address the needs of artists, I’d highly suggest reading Bringing Worlds Together: A Rethinking Residencies Reader, [2023], edited by Kari Conte, ISCP Senior advisor and founder of Rethinking Residencies, and Susan Hapgood, Executive Director of ISCP). Through his experiences, Elliott gained a deep understanding of how residencies work—the resources needed to operate them, the challenges residents might face, the benefits of visiting museums and artist studios, the logistics of coordinating temporary stays in one of the world’s busiest cities—knowledge that made him uniquely equipped to found a fifth program with ISCP. “It’s hard to delineate the qualifications of starting an artist residency, but I’d learned so much through osmosis and through my jobs that I knew I could do it,” Elliott says. “I couldn’t even imagine the responsibilities I had—at times I was like a den mother. It may have taken years off my life, but it was incredibly exciting.”

ISCP opened in 1994 as ISP (the curatorial program would come a few years later in 1999) with one sponsor and twelve studios under the umbrella of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (EFA), which at that point was a small, grant-giving nonprofit. “Our first sponsor was the Seoul-based Kukje Gallery,” Elliott explains. Even in the early years, Elliott recognized the importance of relationships and the beauty of serendipity in building the program. “I was walking down the street and met a Korean artist and told him about ISP. He worked with Kukje Gallery and they agreed to sponsor a residency,” he explains. The gallery sent artist Cody Choi.

The original residency was on the top floor of 451 Greenwich Street in Tribeca that had skylights and ample natural light, a key factor in attracting both artists and sponsors. “There were many artist residencies opening at the time, but they were often in dark buildings and basements,” Elliott says. “When the sponsors saw our spaces, they were blown away.” Kukje Gallery was soon after followed by The Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual Artists (IASPIS).

In the beginning, the residencies were shorter, some just six weeks long. “I only had a handful of artists the first year and didn’t have any staff, so I spent a lot of time with the artists,” Elliott says. “I loved every minute of it.” Elliott slowly built the sponsorship network through the connections he’d made in the art world. Over the next few years, additional sponsors joined, including the Institut Français, CEC Artslink, Inc, the Danish Arts Foundation, and the Asian Cultural Council (ACC). The Danish Arts Foundation, IASPIS, and ACC still sponsor residencies today.

“Sponsors are often institutions that are looking to build cultural strength rather than just market strength,” says Hapgood. The many different organizations that support the residencies have a big role to play in selecting the residents. The criteria are not based on what makes saleable art, but rather on who the sponsors and ISCP feel will make the best use of their time. Additionally, some sponsors have requirements for their residents, such as age, financial need, artistic discipline, and ethnicity. ISCP requires a selection process, which is sometimes undertaken by the sponsors or by ISCP, for which the nonprofit might bring in an outside jury. ISCP also asks its sponsors to provide living stipends for the artists to relieve the burden of working while in their residency. Some provide residents with housing as well.

When expanding, ISCP considers how it can support the artists in the communities they reach, and how these communities can support ISCP. “The relationships ISCP has with its sponsors are meaningful, and we make a concerted effort to expand opportunities to bring artists from countries that we don’t currently reach,” says board member Sophie Olympia Riese.

In 1999, ISP added its curatorial program and became ISCP. In addition to studio space, curators are given resources to support their work, such as information on the best libraries. They are encouraged to do studio visits with ISCP artists, but there is no requirement to include them in exhibitions. “It is a privilege and delight for curators to be amidst so many artists,” says Hapgood. “The artists love having the curators around as well. They can learn about each other organically and better understand the art scene in other parts of the world.” 

ISCP moved with EFA to the 39th Street building the latter purchased in 1998. In 2006, ISCP became an independent nonprofit and separated from EFA. Two years later in 2008, ISCP moved to the building in Brooklyn it now calls home. Karp recalls the decision to move outside of Manhattan. “Moving to East Williamsburg at the time was a bold choice,” she says. “The neighborhood has grown up around ISCP, but it was a different world when the residency opened there. It was pretty visionary.”

The building itself is storied. A former printing factory, the sprawling space has remarkably high ceilings, old wood floors, and large windows that fill many of the studios with natural light. It was also where air conditioning was first installed in 1902, a solution to the humidity problem that was inhibiting the printing press’ operations.

“I think the board was horrified when I showed them for the first time,” Elliott recalls. “They came around once they went inside. We had to do a lot of work, but it’s a special place.”

Now, the building holds thirty-five studios and two galleries, as well as administrative offices for the six full-time and two part-time employees with Hapgood at the helm, having taken over as executive director in 2015 when Elliott stepped down and joined the board (Hapgood was previously the exhibitions director at Independent Curators International and founded the Mumbai Art Room, an exhibition space in India). They are supported by a cohort of five to eight interns. The fourteen-person board also supports ISCP for three-year terms that roll over automatically. A key feature of ISCP’s building is the common areas where residents can cook, engage with one another, and borrow books and materials from shared libraries and supply closets, including over two-hundred books from the personal collection of curator and ISCP trustee Jane Farver. The Jane Farver Library, which can be accessed by appointment, was donated by Farver’s widower, the artist John Moore.

ISCP’s studios are all relatively similar, though they vary in size, ranging from 108 to 378 square feet. Unlike a permanent studio, ISCP residencies are finite, and, like all studios, their spaces inevitably grow over time beginning with a blank slate. Objects and tools of the creative process can pile up, sometimes lingering to be used in or inspire future works. Because of the temporary nature of the residencies, ISCP studios become like a palimpsest with stratigraphic layers, or a visual archive of the resident’s tenure.

“The building today reminds me of the old SoHo art spaces with roughed-up wood floors, high ceilings, and an industrial feel—an era that doesn’t exist anymore,” says Karp. “Improvements have of course been made, but it still recalls a time when the art world was people-centric and things weren’t so slick or corporate. Though it was radical to move to the neighborhood when we did, it made sense. ISCP is a people-centric organization.”

Indeed, interacting in the collegial environment of ISCP, natural relationships form among residents despite their differing schedules (the lengths and start dates vary, so residents are continuously coming and going). Without a set start and end date across the residencies, artists and curators are always at different points in their program, so residents settling in can look to more seasoned residents for advice. “Companionship and intellectual stimulation occur between the residents as they find who they are in sync with in their lives and practices,” says Hapgood. “We provide as much opportunity as we can for them to know each other, but they self-organize.” 

In 2015, to complement the International Artist Residency program, ISCP opened its Ground Floor residency, a one-year program (with the option of renewing for a second year) that provides subsidized studios for artists based in New York, a unique addition that helps strengthen ties with the local community. Current Ground Floor residents include Joiri Minaya (whose work will be in Prospect New Orleans 2024 and was recently included in Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility at the Guggenheim Museum, along with current International Artist resident Sandra Mujinga) and Alchemyverse, an artist duo founded in 2020 by Bicheng Liang and Yixuan Shao. While these and other residents from the International Program residency cohort are familiar with New York, some have never been to the city before their ISCP term.

To immerse residents in the New York art industry, ISCP organizes social gatherings and visits to institutions in and around the city. The robust offerings include visits to Louise Bourgeois’s foundation and blue chip galleries like Hauser & Wirth, as well as tours of institutions like the Guggenheim. ISCP also organizes visits with leaders of the art industry, including long-time supporter Thelma Golden, the Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum, who meet with the artists one-on-one in meaningful conversations about their practices and contemporary art.

“The most critical added value for artists comes from the opportunity to connect with the New York art world and network with its diverse field of movers and shakers in person,” says Anssi Vallius, Special Adviser for Cultural Affairs and Creative Industries to the Consulate General of Finland in New York. “The Consulate has a long and close relationship with ISCP, and we have supported them in various ways since the nineties. The positive feedback I’ve received from past artists-in-residence on ISCP's involvement in facilitating meaningful connections for them has been really encouraging.”

Residents have the opportunity to participate in group and solo exhibitions at ISCP, which occur regularly throughout the year. ISCP also hosts open studios twice per year, inviting the public to visit the residents and curators in events that draw hundreds, sometimes thousands, of attendees. “I remember walking into the studios of Martine Gutierrez and Njideka Akunyili Crosby and not knowing them at the time, but being blown away by their work,” says Karp. “That’s one of the most amazing parts of ISCP. There are artists doing incredible work and you get to see this firsthand. Now, of course, Martine and Njideka have gone on to have acclaimed careers.”

“We will most definitely miss the open studio events,” says Ground Floor resident Alchemyverse. “Everyone is so open with sharing their process and experience. The people we meet through public programs like this and the friendships that emerged from them will remain close to our hearts even after our residency ends.” Alchemyverse’s residency began in March 2022 and is ending on May 31, 2024. While at ISCP, the duo developed several bodies of work that expanded its interdisciplinary research and experimentation-based practice, encompassing visual and aural assemblages with sculptures, photography, and installation. As a Ground Floor resident, Alchemyverse had the opportunity to extend its time at ISCP to two years, capitalizing on one of the most beneficial aspects of the program: its longer duration. For current resident Antonis Pittas, the longer tenure was one of the reasons ISCP stood out. “It gives time to create a rhythm that isn’t possible in a short program; it’s enough time to really have an impact on my practice and my life,” says Pittas, whose year-long residency is sponsored by the Mondriaan Fund. Born in Greece and now based in Amsterdam, Pittas’s practice centers on installation and considers political and social issues through a historic lens, “contemporizing history and historicizing the contemporary,” he explains. Pittas cites the longer residency with relieving pressure and allowing for the time to rethink and expand his practice. Indeed, ISCP refers to itself as a laboratory, a term that implies experiments and research occur within.

“Without the pressure of working towards a specific exhibition or project, artists have space and time to take risks, do research, and really reflect on their next steps,” says Riese. “Sometimes you visit ISCP and there’s very visible output in the studios, and sometimes you step in and there is only evidence of research. That’s the beauty of it—the creative process is always occurring at different stages.”

The longer period also allows artists to travel outside of New York during their residency. Artists like Pittas, for example, use the time to visit cities and cultural institutions across the country, broadening their networks and exposing them to new places that might have an impact on their work. “This was very important to me in coming here,” Pittas says. “As history and modernity are important to my practice, I wanted the opportunity to understand what that looks like in the US. The nature of this residency is such that we’re engaging with a global discourse, but we’re bringing to it our own local discourse. What comes out of this is what makes the experience so unique.”

Over the course of the thirty years since its founding, ISCP residents have participated in countless prestigious exhibitions worldwide. Currently, at least nine former residents have work in the Venice Biennale as representatives of their nations’ pavilions and in the group exhibition, including Renzo Martens (2010) in The Netherlands Pavilion, Anna Jermolaewa (2015) representing Austria, and the conceptual collective Claire Fontaine (2011) in the Holy See Pavilion and the main exhibition, Foreigners Everywhere, which borrows its title from a series of neon sculptures by Claire Fontaine. Three former curatorial residents are also involved with this year’s Venice Biennale, including Antonia Majaca (2007) for the Croatian Pavilion and Carlos Quijon Jr. (2023), who curated the Philippines Pavilion.

“ISCP is a hidden aspect to the art world in many ways, yet when you know about it you see it everywhere,” Riese says. Back in New York, ISCP has four former residents in the 2024 Whitney Biennial: Charisse Pearlina Weston (2020), Demian DinéYazhi´ (2020), ektor garcia (2019), and Lotus L. Kang (2018 and 2022). Later this year, several artists will participate in the Prospect New Orleans triennial, including Abigail DeVille (2012), Jeannette Ehlers (2011), Ruth Owens (2023), and Didier William (2017). During Pamela Council’s 2021 residency, the artist met with program staff from the Times Square Alliance that led to a monumental public installation made with acrylic nails in Times Square. At Documenta 15 in 2022, ISCP discovered that former residents who had met during the program had formed a collective and were participating in the exhibition. The artists, Chia-Wei Hsu from Taiwan and collaborative jiandyin from Thailand have been working for over a decade as Baan Noorg Collaborative.

“A number of Finland’s leading contemporary artists have participated in the ISCP residency program over the past years, which has boosted their international recognition, especially here in the US,” says Vallius. The 2018 Finnish resident Iiu Susiraja had an acclaimed solo show at MoMA PS1 last year and two solo shows at Nino Mier’s galleries in New York and Los Angeles. Additionally, 2015 resident Pilvi Takala represented Finland at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022 and was one the featured artists at Finland’s Pavilion Without Walls at the Performa 2023 Biennial.

As it reflects on thirty years and looks to the future, ISCP is hoping to continue growing its international network and reputation. “I’d love to see a much more robust alumni community outreach and benefits,” says Hapgood. “I’d also like to spread the word more about ISCP. The institution's legacy is growing and it needs to be better known.” ISCP has launched a capital campaign to expand the program and fully modernize the building. It is also reflecting on the past and future with a group show opening in early September. Rather than attempt to represent thousands of residencies, the show will take a focused look at one of ISCP’s constants: the studio itself. “The studio is the lifeblood of the program,” says Melinda Lang, director of programs and exhibitions. “The studio is the reason for ISCP. This was true when it was founded and it’s still true today.”

Indeed, the scarcity and cost of studios that led Elliott to found ISCP remain significant challenges for artists. While considering the expanded definition of the studio, as tools for creativity and productivity have increased with technology like laptops and smartphones, the exhibition also takes into account the importance of having a physical venue to think, take refuge from the city, test ideas, and accumulate thoughts and materials. The show will feature five to seven artists who span disciplines, generations, and countries, reflecting ISCP across the years. Included in the show are Joiri Minaya (current), Sophie Tottie (one of the first residents to join in 1994), Frank Wang Yefeng (2021), Daniel Guzmán (2000), and Martine Gutierrez (2017). “ISCP was my first time having a studio in New York; before that I was making everything in my bedroom,” says Gutierrez. During her residency in 2017, the artist worked on the “Demons” series (2018) from her Indigenous Woman photographic publication (many of these images are now in major collections, including the Whitney and MoMA). “I used to dress up in costume and walk along the train tracks with a camera and a tripod looking for open warehouses to shoot in,” she says. “Being surrounded by artists [at ISCP] who were so serious about their practice made me feel I should be too.”

“Speaking with artists, I realized that they often tied certain memories of their time at ISCP with how their studio looked—like the state of the materials inside documented different points in their creative process,” Lang says. “ISCP studios are temporary, and moving studios can be restricting, but it can also be liberating, providing artists with that blank slate again. The physical space can be a sanctuary that can inspire the work. In this light, ISCP and the studios it provides can be an inflection point in the artist’s career.”