Watermill Center Fall & Spring Residencies

The Watermill Center gives artists space and time, and encourages them to create new ideas in all artistic fields and media. The Watermill Center explores new forms of artistic apprenticeship, production and collaboration. It is a laboratory for the arts and humanities.

The Watermill Center supplies a unique architectural and natural environment as a space to live and work that was created by the performance and visual artist Robert Wilson in the strong belief that living and creating are one thing. With the Grand Opening of the facility in July 2006, the Center is now ready to fulfill its mission by inviting emerging artists to work, live, create and learn while concentrating their energies on their own projects.

The Center makes available the eclectic art collection and the archives of its founder Robert Wilson. These function as a reference and a backdrop to each resident's individual work and as an integral part of everyday life. Since “living and creating art are one thing”, it also means to live with art. In Robert Wilson's world, every object can turn into art because every detail can change the way we look at the world.

As part of the Center's outreach to the local community, each artist or group that resides and works at Watermill Center is required to conduct an event for the public (i.e. a master class, an open rehearsal, a workshop for schools or other local groups etc.). Concurrent with the residency programs, Watermill Center staff conduct tours of the facilities, grounds and collection, as well as educational experiences for students.

The Center seeks artists who have a specific project on which they would like to work, where the aesthetics and mission, as well as the physical plant of the Center would support and further their goals. Prospective residents would need to feel comfortable working in a collaborative, communal environment where respect for the building, the collection and surroundings is upheld in all that is accomplished.