THE INSTITUTE

A Fellowship for Artists and Scholars

Each year at Reid Hall in Paris, the Institute for Ideas and Imagination offers 14 Fellows the opportunity to pursue their work, experiment beyond their fields, and benefit from ongoing conversations and exchange in a context that fosters mutual trust and creative rigor. Unexpected collaborations emerge, whose effects last far beyond the fellowship year.

Collaboration of the sort encouraged by the fellowship — a sustained attention to each other’s work and wellbeing, a process of imaginative leaps across all sorts of boundaries — is enriching in ways that are profound if difficult to measure. The company of my fellow artists and scholars has sharpened my thinking, but more importantly it has deepened my feeling.

Yasmine Seale, United Kingdom, poet and translator, 2022-23 Fellow

Architecture at the Institute and in the neighborhood

Based in Paris, the Institute is housed within Reid Hall, a large property in Montparnasse dating back to the 18th century. Overlooking a verdant garden and a cobblestone courtyard, the Institute contains fellows’ offices on two floors, and a seminar room, reading room and common room/dining area on the top floor. The entire building was renovated and modernized by Explorations Architecture in 2017–2018. The building backs onto the rue de la Grande Chaumière, home to a famous painting academy of the early twentieth century, and the studios of artists such as Amadeo Modigliani and Paul Gauguin.

Collaboration of the sort encouraged by the fellowship — a sustained attention to each other’s work and wellbeing, a process of imaginative leaps across all sorts of boundaries — is enriching in ways that are profound if difficult to measure. The company of my fellow artists and scholars has sharpened my thinking, but more importantly it has deepened my feeling.

Yasmine Seale, United Kingdom, poet and translator, 2022-23 Fellow