Roman J. Witt Residency Application

The mission of the Roman J. Witt Residency Program is to support the production of new work in collaboration with the Stamps School of Art & Design community. The program awards one residency per academic year for a visiting artist/designer to work at the school to develop a new work in collaboration with students and faculty.

A singular feature of the 2020 Witt Residency is the Stamps School’s collaboration with the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA), who will provide a highly visible gallery in the museum — the Stenn Gallery — as an installation and workspace for the Witt Resident. The artist/designer will spend a good portion of the week working in this gallery (a minimum of three days, with 6 hours per day during museum open hours), creating and installing a work of art that will remain on view. This act of “public making” is an exemplary teaching tool and provides the Stamps School community and the university at large with the opportunity to witness and partake in the creation of a defined work from concept to completion with the artist in residence.

The Irving Stenn, Jr. Family Gallery is the museum's glass-walled temporary exhibition space devoted to cutting-edge contemporary installation art. At ground level with two walls of transparent glass, the artist/designer will be on view when working in the Stenn Gallery. It is situated at the corner of a major circulation path on campus, called the "Diag." Submitted proposals should suggest how the artist/designer plans to deploy the converging factors of the gallery into a vibrant, collaborative, and memorable residency. This, along with the completed final artwork, will strongly determine selection of the artist/designer. It is expected that a significant portion of time in the gallery space will be spent with direct interaction with students. Ideas for student interactions include but are not limited to: allowing students to work with the artist/designer; be in dialogue with the artist/designer; provide critiques on student work; engage in student-led interviews; or allowing for student observation of artist/designer’s process. Creative methods of engagement to animate the gallery space as a focal point of campus activity are highly encouraged.

The residency is expected to culminate in the realization of the proposed work, as well as its presentation. At the end of the residency, the artist/designer’s installation in the Stenn Gallery will remain on view for two weeks, before any de-installation. De-installation is the responsibility of the artist/designer: the work created is the property of the artist. Please see gallery plan and protocols.

Eligibility

The Witt Residency is open to both established and emerging artists/designers. The Witt residency provides students an alternative learning opportunity to engage with practicing artists/designers who can make use of resources across campus, therefore the ideal candidate must value collaboration, have good social and communication skills and be interested in generating creative partnerships across disciplines. It is the goal of the Witt Residency to foster an atmosphere of inventive creative activity that extends throughout the University community. 

Honorarium

Witt Residents receive an honorarium of $20,000 for up to twelve weeks in residence served over an academic year. In addition to the honorarium, residents will be provided with housing, studio space, and up to $4,000 funding support for project materials and installation. The School encourages applications from individuals as well as from creative teams however, please be advised that the resources listed above are finite, including the travel budget. If teams apply the expectation is that the award will be shared between its members. 

How to Apply

Applications are no longer being accepted for the 2019-20 Witt Residency. Please check back in November 2019 for information on the 2020-21 Residency cycle.

About the Stamps School of Art & Design

Offering a unique art and design education within the University of Michigan, the Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan focuses on research-based, transdisciplinary creative practice as an engine for cultural change and innovation.

The Stamps undergraduate program offers a non-media specific degree at the intersection of art and design and challenges students to define their own creative path through an open curriculum. Our dynamic two-year MFA program integrates creative production with rigorous academic studies, international study with regional community engagement, and theoretical grounding with skills development. It is structured to expand the intellectual reach of creative work and utilize a comprehensive process for bringing creative work into the world. Our MDes in Integrative Design aligns graduate education with the best in emerging professional practice. Rooted in collaboration, our two-year MDes program brings together a small cohort to focus on addressing one "wicked problem" through design.

The Stamps School of Art & Design has a current enrollment of 500 undergraduate and nineteen graduate students. Fifty-four full-time faculty, a cohort of part-time faculty, and forty administrative and technical staff support the School's programs. Additional information about the School and its programs is available at stamps.umich.edu.

The school’s main facility is located on the university’s North Campus, and includes well-equipped media studios for drawing, painting, printmaking (lithography and intaglio), clay, wood, fibers, hot metals (welding, casting, brazing), cold metals (machine tools), video, photography (large and small format printers), and digital fabrication. The School of Art & Design also maintains faculty/graduate studio facilities off-campus at 1919 Green Rd, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. This 33,000-square foot facility accommodates all of the school’s faculty and graduate students in one building, with sixty-six private studios for all full-time faculty and graduate students, large shared working and meeting spaces, wood, metal, and multi-purpose shops and a digital media studio.

About UMMA (The University of Michigan Museum of Art)

Located at the heart of one of the world’s finest public research universities and housing a venerable, encyclopedic art collection of more than 21,000 objects, the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) seeks to transform individual and civic life by promoting the discovery, contemplation, and enjoyment of the art of our world. UMMA is a place where heritage meets innovation, minds are enriched, and communities come together—locally, nationally, and globally. UMMA engages more than 240,000 visitors on site annually and a similar size global audience via exhibition tours, publications, and web-based tools. The Museum is always free and is fully accessible—fostering a climate of inclusion and participation. Recently named the number one public university art museum in the country, UMMA has been lauded by the New York Times as being “in the forefront” among university art museums creating innovative, multidisciplinary exhibitions and publications with regional and national appeal. The Museum’s dynamic schedule of special exhibitions and interpretative programs connect visitors with the rich artistic legacy of the past and today’s avant-garde; enabling compelling encounters with art that ignite creativity and forge connections across diverse disciplines, geographies, and cultures.

Engagement with the extensive scholarly, human, and technical resources of the University of Michigan is encouraged and facilitated. Comprised of nineteen schools and colleges, U-M is one of the world's foremost public research universities. Current enrollment on the Ann Arbor campus totals 44,718 graduate and undergraduate students. Additional information about the University of Michigan is available at umich.edu.

Location

Ann Arbor, located forty miles west of Detroit on the Huron River, is an intellectually and culturally rich community, with a current population of 120,782. Additional information about Ann Arbor is available at annarbor.org.