How Villa Albertine Reinvents Creative Residencies
Director Gaëtan Bruel photographed at the Villa Albertine in New York City. Credit: Beowulf Sheehan.
The Payne Whitney House at 972 Fifth Avenue was designed by architect Stanford White as a private residence in 1909. At 22,020 square feet over six floors, it’s a heck of a home. Today, when you step inside, you’re technically in France, as it has housed the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States since 1952.
The space is an important hub for global creators, thinkers and cultural professionals. It is home to Villa Albertine, a new French institution for arts and ideas in the United States, that builds on the bold and innovative programs that have been the hallmark of the French cultural network abroad for more than a century. Created by the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, and supported by the French Ministry of Culture, Villa Albertine offers a novel artists’ residency model in which residents choose the location best suited to their work within the U.S.
That’s right, you don’t necessarily have to be in New York City to participate in the program (or even be French, though most participants are). Director Gaëtan Bruel and his team introduced that key element as just one of their many ideas to reinvent the artists’ residency for the 21st century. (Villa Albertine offers much more than the residency, including festivals, events, grants, “next-gen” programs, even its own luxurious “bookazine”.) What happens when dozens of artists let loose on the roads of America? Photographer Nicolas Floc’h’s captured the color of the Mississippi River, traveling 13,000 miles in six months (via van and canoe) from the Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico. And down in Marfa, Spanish filmmaker and aerospace engineer Vanessa del Campo, France-based American designer Elizabeth Hong, and others examined how we can deconstruct our collective imagination of outer space to nurture a thirst for exploration without feeding the hunger for conquest, territory, and appropriation. There are many more tales of creative adventure. In 18 months, 170 creators from 25 countries have already been welcomed in 50 cities and territories across the country — and Villa Albertine is just getting started.
The cultural institution recently announced its new residents for the upcoming year. They include visual artist Younes Baba-Ali who will spend time in New York City investigating the sonic identity of street vendors, while writer Céline Minard will explore the L.A. River Ecosystem Restoration Project, research that will inform a book that imagines a city reclaimed by species that have disappeared from it over the years. Here, Bruel shines light on Villa Albertine and its far-reaching impact, discusses what a modern creative residency must include, and shares how his own unique career path — which includes working as the speechwriter for the French Minister of Defense and leading the Panthéon in Paris — has shaped his worldview as a “creative civil servant.”
We’ve seen state-level support for the arts, culture, and design in places such as the UK and Sweden. But Villa Albertine is unique in its expansive reach and forward thinking approach. What is the mission?
Our mission has always been to support French cultural actors across the U.S., from artists to cultural institutions and creative companies, and to create new opportunities for French and American society to engage with one another on the most pressing issues that they both face. But as the world is constantly changing, and of course culture along with it, we have embraced the motto of Captain Nemo in Jules Verne’s Ten Thousand Leagues Under the Sea: Mobilis in Mobile — “moving through the moving element”. When everything is changing around us, we aim to chart our own path of change.
How does the creative residency fit into this? And how are you reshaping it?
Our main mission, to support creators, hasn’t changed. But thinking critically about how to best support them has led us to develop innovative tools.
For the last 25 years, we were focused on supporting the dissemination of French and Francophone art and culture by giving grants to American institutions organizing exhibitions, bringing authors on book tours, and building resources for students to host on-campus film festivals. All of this we continue to do and have even strengthened under the umbrella of Villa Albertine. But we also wanted to extend our impact further, to reach the roots of creative work and support creators in their research, explorations, and wanderings, before the final artwork comes to life, supporting creators with no pressure on their creation.
With Villa Albertine, we wanted to take this idea even further, and that meant rethinking the traditional residency model.
It just so happens that the first artists' residence was created by France. With the Académie de France in Rome, initiated by King Louis XIV, a group of artists from different horizons were invited for the first time to stay in the same place, to learn from each other, and to draw inspiration from their environment. This artists' residence, which still exists today as Villa Medici, inspired many others, starting with the American Academies in Berlin and Rome. Just like in the 17th century, when France aimed to help its best artists exchange with and learn from the innovations of Renaissance Italy, France has long aimed to open a creative residency in the United States, in recognition of this country's unique place on the world map of arts and ideas.
However, while the need for this kind of institution was clear, the solution was not. How could the immensity and cultural diversity of the United States, and the specific needs of artists, be met with a residency in a single city, even New York? How do you empower an architect to go to Chicago, a screenwriter to choose Los Angeles, a jazz musician to explore New Orleans? With Villa Albertine we wanted to create a residence that would be ubiquitous, placing creative people wherever they needed to go while meeting their specific and individual project needs. Moving away from the "one size fits all" model, we believe that the value of a residency lies not only in its location (or locations), but above all in the quality of the support provided. We want to give new value to artistic mobility: if the idea is to cross the Atlantic just to close yourself up in a studio, you might as well stay in France. If, on the other hand, the aim is to meet people, to explore, to inspire yourself and perhaps those around you, then the artist residency takes on a new meaning, a new form, and a new social impact. This is the driving force of Villa Albertine’s residency program.
What are your goals for the program?
We have three goals. The first is to offer our residents access and unprecedented levels of support, thanks to a team of 90 people on the ground, a network of dozens of partners across the U.S., France and beyond, and a carefully-designed methodology. The question, therefore, is not only “how can we create a space of freedom for artists?” but also “what can we do with this freedom? How can we multiply the opportunities offered to artists, in a dual quest for inspiration and professional connection? How can we support them as they take risks, deepen their talent, and advance their careers?”
Our second goal is to renew the creative conversation between France and the U.S., notably by rethinking who speaks on behalf of France. Instead of trying to control a public discourse about France, we want to let artists and other creative minds speak for themselves. This France is perhaps less polished, possibly less expected, certainly more diverse, younger, more daring, surprising even for some French people, and absolutely refreshing.
And finally, we have a core belief that in a world in crisis, not only do artists need to be supported, but they actually can and should support us in the critical task of understanding the world we live in and imagining new ways to inhabit it. We want Villa Albertine to be a think tank of creativity where we take creators’ voices seriously and amplify them as they explore the most challenging issues of our time.
Countries have both significant budgets and considerable operating constraints. What have you learned so far about building a creative program within the public sector?
First of all, every day I realize how lucky I am to be French. I come from a country that passionately loves creators, and that believes in the need to fund culture. For example, in the field of virtual reality our Ministry of Culture (through the CNC) has been massively investing in the creative ecosystem for ten years now, without having to wait for a business model or guarantees of profitability. The result is that the French are consistently ahead of the game in the discipline, winning prizes at international festivals year after year. This is the case in many fields, and the great benefit of a forward-thinking public funding model.
This unique model of support for culture has another characteristic: we believe in a cultural landscape open to all histories, all influences. Being French is not a requirement for our residency program, which has already welcomed artists from 25 countries. In this way, France supports culture everywhere in the world, even more than its own culture.
Having said that, we obviously have our own limitations and constraints. But as classical poetry can teach us, constraints inspire creativity! In the case of Villa Albertine, we started with a blank page, without worrying about the constraints at first: How do we scale up to a country the size of a continent? And how do we take into account the specific needs of each artist, rather than offering them a "group solution"? It was this blank page approach that enabled us to define the ideal artist residency, one that is ubiquitous, tailor-made, and gives a new, truly geographical meaning to the idea of artistic exploration.
Once this ideal model had been defined, we had to make it possible. That's where constraints allowed us to be creative. At first glance, this model was extremely expensive, several dozen residency sites across the US, numerous teams to provide individual support. Had we presented it in this way, it would probably never have seen the light of day. So we thought about another approach, one that would take existing constraints into account, starting with the reality of our organization, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the U.S.
The Cultural Services were created after the Second World War, when General de Gaulle sent Claude Lévi-Strauss to open a French Institute in the United States, a model of French cultural diplomacy since the mid-19th century. But when Lévi-Strauss arrived, he had this brilliant intuition: in a country of 200 million inhabitants (300 million today!), a country larger than Europe, it would be exhausting to reach the American public through physical locations, offering French courses and cultural events in a traditional way. Instead, Lévi-Strauss invented a B2B model: targeting American cultural leaders through off-site action and a logic of systematic partnerships, from 10 expert offices spread across the country. Eighty years on, this is still our model.
So why not make Villa Albertine a transformational project for our organization, rather than an institution built from scratch? We already had an established team, several decades of experience supporting artists, and a national network of partners. We recruited, increased our funding, invented a support method, and that's how it all began... We created the concept in spring 2020, it was approved in summer 2020, and we needed a year to operationalize it. We announced Villa Albertine publicly in the summer of 2021, and officially launched that autumn. In 18 months, we have already welcomed 170 creators to 50 cities across the United States.
Tell us about some of your residents and their projects. What was photographer Nicolas Floc’h’s objective and how did it play out?
Nicolas Floc'h is a French photographer whose work focuses on rivers and oceans. He had a somewhat unreasonable project idea: to capture the changing colors of the Mississippi, from its source in Minnesota all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. This kind of project required not a fixed place of residence but a van with a canoe on the roof, and support along 14,000 miles, for 6 months. Not to mention a driver, because Nicolas Floc’h doesn't have a license!
This highly specific, individualized support is exactly what Villa Albertine could offer him. I’m not saying it was easy to set up, but we worked hard, alongside the partners he brought to his residency (a requirement for every resident, with no financial obligation), notably the Camargo Foundation. The result was an exceptional exploration, revealing the true universe of the river, its place in American identity, its role in sustaining local cultures, its challenges surrounding pollution, and the breathtaking beauty of its changing colors… Such an exploration will give rise to an exhibition, a book, and other developments to be announced.
What intrigued you about Vanessa del Campo, Elizabeth Hong, and their group’s work? And what was the outcome?
This project is another adventure. We wanted to create the anti-Villa Albertine within Villa Albertine! While our founding ambition is to disperse our residents in time and space, so that they embed in local communities rather than building ties amongst themselves, we also wanted to help create a true collective residency, a community of artists from a wide variety of backgrounds who would come together to explore as deeply as possible one contemporary issue that confronts us all today. This is a project we’ll pursue every other year.
With the help of the Centre Pompidou and NASA, who were part of the selection process, we brought together a collective of five creators and thinkers (three French, one Chilean, one American), in Marfa, Texas. Their task was to question our imaginaries of outer space and write a new creative handbook for space exploration that better reflects the challenges we currently face on our own planet.
What has been your career path to the role of Director, Villa Albertine?
I was born in Montpellier, in the south of France, and grew up in different places. My parents were teachers, but also sailing instructors. One year, they thought the best education they could give my sister and me was to take us on our sailboat around the Mediterranean Sea, to Italy and Greece. It remains to this day my most wonderful life experience. I was lucky enough to grow up in an environment where curiosity and creativity of any kind were encouraged. My little sister, Océane, is a visual artist. My older sister, Frédérique, teaches theater. Although I became interested in the arts very early in my life, at first I was a little frustrated that I didn't have any creative talent myself. But I learned that you can be creative in many ways. I believe I take a creative and entrepreneurial approach to my role as a civil servant.
What are some of your career steps and what thread connects them?
My first job was teaching French at Columbia University. I was 21, the same age as my students! That was the year I met New York. Back in Paris, just as I was about to resume and finish my degrees at the ENS, I switched tracks to become the speechwriter for the Minister of Defense. It was another sort of fast-track education! I loved those years, working with brilliant colleagues around issues that often touched on life and death...
I had several roles during those four years. I was notably in charge of bringing the world of cinema and the world of intelligence closer together. The TV series The Bureau is one of the projects I worked on. I then served as director of two national monuments: the Arc de Triomphe and the Pantheon. For me, having studied history, this was deeply meaningful. I believe one of our great questions in life is how to make up for lost time. Monuments are places that enable us to rediscover time that has fled, particularly the time that forged a country, and that enables us to question its present.
Finally, I came back to my former boss’ team, President Hollande's Minister of Defense, when he was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs by President Macron in 2017. This is how, as a non-diplomat, I started to work for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, first as the Minister's advisor for the Americas and for culture (the two being separate: on the one hand I monitored France's diplomacy with the Americas, from Alaska to Chile, from Trump to Bolsonaro, the crisis in Venezuela, the humanitarian situation in Haiti... and on the other hand I supported French cultural projects around the world: the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Centre Pompidou in Shanghai, the restitution of artifacts to African countries…). At the crossroads of these two subjects was my current position at the head of Villa Albertine and the Cultural Services in the US, and that's how I came back to New York in 2019. If there's a common thread, it's curiosity, and of course culture and the arts, which I've explored from different angles.
After working with more than 100 artists, what advice or guidance would you have for others looking to develop a meaningful creative residency?
There is no single model, and Villa Albertine is certainly not a manifesto of what an artist residency should be today. What I have learned, however, is that we need to recreate spaces of freedom for artists, where we allow them to take real risks, and take risks ourselves in the process.
We all like to go and see a great film, visit an exhibition of a major artist we admire, read the latest book by an celebrated writer, admire architectural masterpieces... But we mustn't forget that all these creators were young, unknown, at some point in their careers, and that behind these artistic achievements are unique and individual creative processes.
The exciting thing about an artist residency is that we stand alongside the creators, not so much for what they want to do, but for who they want to become. What's at stake is perhaps their next creation, but more importantly their journey as a creator. The artist residency should invite us to shift our attention from the artistic projects downstream to the artistic process that makes them possible upstream. If we love the arts, if we believe in their power to console and transform, perhaps we should start by listening more carefully to those who make them.
If you’d like to read more from Creative Factor, subscribe to our newsletter. Or looking to tell your brand story? Introducing Creative Factor’s Storytelling Studio for businesses.
Plus, more great reads right this way…
