Five Years of Artists’ Residencies Across the United States
By Lina Pamart, head of the artists’ residencies program at Villa Albertine
“Art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take the risk,” wrote Mark Rothko. In the painter’s spirit, creativity is a leap into discovery—a deliberate step beyond the familiar.
It is precisely this spirit of exploration that guides Villa Albertine’s mission. Since 2021, Villa Albertine, the French Institute for Culture and Education, has enabled more than 370 artists and thinkers to travel to the United States, across more than 60 cities and regions. Each residency writes its own story: the journey of an exceptional creative mind from France or beyond, given the freedom to pursue an artistic project—a screenplay, a novel, a musical composition, a performance—while engaging deeply with American places and communities.
Through its unique field-based artists’ residency program, Villa Albertine pursues two ambitions: to foster creative work addressing the great challenges of our time, and to nurture people-to-people connections between French and American societies. Its philosophy rests on a deep belief in the transformative power of encountering otherness through arts and ideas—experiences that prompt creators to move beyond their usual territory, assumptions, and circles.
What new horizons have these journeys opened? In less than five years, Villa Albertine residencies have given rise to nearly ninety works—novels and essays, exhibitions, films, concerts, dance and design projects, immersive experiences, and academic and museum collaborations.
Through these creations, artists illuminate and question our world, addressing the issues that shape our societies. In doing so, they awaken our consciousness and expand our imagination. Yet art’s reach extends even further. As bell hooks writes, “The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is—it’s to imagine what it could be.” The projects born of these adventures look to the future: they generate new perspectives on contemporary issues and open opportunities on both sides of the Atlantic.
The profiles that follow offer a living illustration of these journeys. Here, we encounter a children’s book by Pierre-Emmanuel Lyet that blossomed in New York—part field report, part urban poem. Gallerist Mariane Ibrahim discusses how a residency at Villa Albertine can nourish, shift, and enrich an artist’s career. We learn of Villa Albertine’s essential role in the creation of composer Sivan Eldar’s unclassifiable opera, The Nine Jewelled Deer. And we see how Wanjiru Kamuyu’s research during her residency led to Fragmented Shadows, a dance work in which movement and music become a shared language.
Drawing on 250 years of Franco-American exchange, Villa Albertine’s residencies lay the groundwork for new movements in the worlds of art and ideas—rooted in experience, engaged with the realities of our societies, and ever opening new paths where imagination meets the world.
Lina Pamart is head of the artists’ residencies program at Villa Albertine.
This essay first appeared in States, the annual magazine of Villa Albertine, published in January 2026.
