Inside the Institute

A member of the Columbia Global Initiatives association, housed at Reid Hall in Paris, the Institute for Ideas and Imagination hosts between fourteen and sixteen residential fellows annually. Asserting the ongoing power of the imagination in the formation and communication of ideas, it aims to foster new synergies between scholars and creative artists to their mutual benefit.

The Institute also welcomes visiting scholars and faculty who wish to come for shorter stays in order to carry out their research, organize workshops and conferences, or curate performances and exhibitions.

DATES, PLACES, THINGS. Postcard by Lynnette Widder during her Fellowship, 2021.

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.

A presidential initiative that grew out of an extended process of faculty consultation, the Institute aims to encourage connections between the analytic and the creative imagination

It was born of the conviction that the transformation of the global knowledge economy poses new challenges to the way ideas are conceived and communicated, and aims to help academia meet those challenges by fostering an environment of imaginative exploration, global in character, in which a younger generation of scholars and creative artists works alongside more established scholars to produce innovative work that will introduce new perspectives into the university and the culture more broadly. A showcase for their ongoing work is the regular series of fellows’ lectures, talks and performances, and the SNF Rendez-vous de l’Institut, which are free and open to the public.

Donors

The Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination is made possible by the generous support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), Areté Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Daniel Cohen, and with additional gifts from Judith Ginsberg and Paul LeClerc, Olga and George Votis, the EHA Foundation, and Mel and Lois Tukman.

Inside the Institute

A presidential initiative that grew out of an extended process of faculty consultation, the Institute aims to encourage connections between the analytic and the creative imagination

Donors

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