The first wave

The first wave of artist-in-residence programs came at the beginning of the last century. Take The Corporation of Yaddo, founded in 1900 and the Woodstock Guild/ Byrdcliffe Arts Colony in 1903, both established in the state of New York. Yaddo was founded by art-loving benefactors. They regarded offering guest studios to individual artists as a new kind of patronage. Woodstock Guild was founded by artists and was run on their own terms: a sense of community was very prominent in this artists’ colony. Both models were typical of a lot of other artist-in-residence programs which were set up during the first decades of the 20th century, both in the United States and Europe. An example in Europe is the artists' colony at the small village of Worpswede near Bremen: founded in 1889 by, amongst others, the artists Heinrich Vogeler and Rainer Maria Rilke. Soon they managed to draw attention to Worpswede internationally. In those times the village even was called 'Weltdorf'. In 1971 the colony was given a new boost with the foundation of KünstlerhäuserWorpswede, which has grown into one of the most renowned international residential art centers. Another European example is the Gregory Fellowships, dating from 1951, funded by the Yorkshire printer Peter Gregory, placed painters, sculptors, poets and musicians in the University of Leeds. The University was, at that time, primarily a technical institution with very little arts activity, and the presence of the artists was intended to humanise the university. The Gregory Fellowships helped to set the typical formal for subsequent artist in residence schemes, with the fellows being free to move around the university as they wished, and not being tied to any one department.