Yale University Art Gallery

Happy and Bob Doran Artist-in-Residence Program

The Happy and Bob Doran Artist-in-Residence Program enables one or more artists each year, at a pivotal point in their careers, to explore new avenues of thinking and image making by availing them to the intellectual and physical resources of the University.

As Jock Reynolds, Henry J. Heinz II Director of the Gallery has stated, “The Gallery is broadening its support of living artists by offering them specific opportunities to engage the full array of Yale’s remarkable resources – its many magnificent collections and human intellectual resources. This initiative should surprise no one, for this teaching museum was founded with the collection of a living artist’s work back in 1832 (Colonel John Trumbull’s famed American history paintings and portraits), and has continuously expanded its artistic holdings and educational mission based on the contributions that myriad visual artists have made to world culture. Artists invited to conduct research at Yale will henceforth receive the same kind of strong support offered to other esteemed scholars in the sciences and humanities at our university. The Happy and Bob Doran program is being fully endowed and will grow in time, thus providing this invaluable service to visual artists in perpetuity.”

The residents spend four weeks or longer during the academic year in New Haven exploring the research and technological facilities of the University as well as interfacing with their intellectual counterparts in a broad range of academic disciplines.  Their presence on campus over an extended period of time will enable undergraduate and graduate students to observe artistic process and will encourage the students to explore interdisciplinary connections in their own studies.

Each resident artist will engage students in their research and creative process.  This may be in the form of an informal discussion, studio critique, or gallery talk.  Additional art projects may also result from the residency, but are not integral to its definition, and may take the form of an artwork, publication, exhibition installation, cd, or alternate programmatic initiative.

There is not an application process for the program and the artists are invited to participate in the residency by the Gallery’s Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art in consultation with the Director, Deputy Director of Programs and External Affairs, Curator of Academic Initiatives, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.  Artists, working in any medium, are selected for the quality of their work and the potential the residency offers for nurturing and enriching their practice.