Program for Creative Arts Fellowship
The 2008 launch of the annual Creative Arts Fellowship Program at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center dramatically increased the Foundation's stake in the visual arts. Global in scope, the Fellowship Program is rigorously ambitious, highly selective and an unparalleled opportunity for the chosen artists, who are selected by a panel through a nomination process.
The Award
Each Bellagio Creative Arts Fellow is awarded a three-month residency in a private apartment, complete with studio space, on the peaceful grounds of the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, adjacent to Northern Italy’s Lake Como. In addition to room and board, each Fellow will receive 12,000 Euros, a materials stipend, round-trip travel expenses to Bellagio, and a printed catalog of artwork, to be produced after the residency.
Meals and informal presentations of work provide an opportunity for the creative arts fellow to engage with other Center residents, who include a wide range of artists and writers, practitioners and policymakers, scholars and scientists from around the world. During special dinners, fellows and residents also have the chance to interact with the participants of international conferences that are hosted in various buildings on the Center’s property.
The Bellagio Center's conference and residency programs attract influential and relevant leaders, policymakers, artists and scholars from around the world to share their ideas and projects, to debate and to collaborate. They address issues that are fundamental to the Foundation’s mission.
The combination of private time for work and reflection and informal gatherings is an important part of life at the Center.
The Winners: 2009 Bellagio Center Creative Arts Fellows
The 2009 Creative Arts Fellows are:
The Selection Process
An advisory panel of leading international curators and artists identified 2008 nominees from all over the world. The Foundation has chosen three of the most outstanding candidates and announced the 2008 Fellows on October 15, 2008, during the London Frieze Art Fair.
Advisory Panel member and former resident Catherine de Zegher said, "To be offered a period of calm and distance away from other obligations allowed me to focus on the development of my writing.” She described her role as one of the advisory panelists as "a wonderful opportunity to share my enthusiasm for this rare space of quietude, reflection, and unexpected lucidity of artistic expression.”