The Institute 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.
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, Les Rendez-vous de l’Institut, which are free and open to the public.
The Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination is made possible by the generous support of the Areté Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Stavros Niarchos 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.
