ABOUT 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

Public Programs

The Institute aims to enhance the cultural life of Paris and Columbia University through public events, concerts, talks and performances and maintains relationships with museums, universities, and libraries in the city and beyond. Throughout the year Fellows present their work to the public in the signature series of talks called the SNF Rendez-Vous de l’Institut. In addition, the Institute hosts programs events, talks and screenings for students, faculty and the larger university community on the main University campus in New York, and supports cultural and artistic outreach in Greece through the SNF Public Humanities Initiative.

What is especially great about this fellowship is the freedom that it gives to us to be whatever we want to be, outside of the traditional disciplinary boundaries: one can be a poet, a writer, an academic, an artist, and a publisher at the same time… A transformative year.

Jana Berankova, Post-doctoral scholar, architectural history, 2024-2025 Fellow

Reid Hall Visitors

Each year Reid Hall welcomes around ten Columbia Faculty Visitors for short-term stays. Scholars drawn from across the Schools of the University join the Fellows in their workshops and conversations, give public lectures, and contribute to the Atelier series of podcasts.

One of the most generative and creative intellectual experiences I have had.  Combining artists from around the world with Columbia professors is just the right formula. And of course the gorgeous setting of Reid Hall doesn’t hurt. 

Olatunde Johnson, Law School, 2023 Faculty Visitor

Displaced Artists

The Displaced Artists program annually hosts one to three artists and journalists who have had to flee their countries because of war or political oppression.

The hallways of Reid Hall carry the memory of writing in a safe place, every corner felt like it had a story waiting to be discovered. … Home is not only the place where we live, sometimes it’s the place where our heart rests. And for me Reid Hall will always be that place.

Aliyeh Atae, Iran/Afghanistan, writer, 2022-23 Displaced Artist

History

The project of creating a unique community of thinkers and artists within a University environment emerged in 2013 out of discussions among faculty supported by then Global Paris Center Director Paul LeClerc and President Lee Bollinger. Its primary goal is to foster deep connections between the worlds of academia and the arts. Its home is the historic and majestic garden building of Reid Hall, which was renovated by Explorations Architecture in 2018. That fall the Institute opened its doors to its first cohort of Fellows. Since then, it has established an international reputation for fostering the global exchange of ideas at the highest level.

Spending time with my co-fellows at the II&I was a continuous process of excavation and discovery. As we found our footing in the beautiful physical space as well as with each other, images and sounds came to rival words, breaching the boundaries of specialized discourses became our second nature, and the posturing that is often part of academic debates felt exceedingly exotic. A transformative experience.

Katharina Pistor, Columbia, Law, 2022-23 Fellow

Donors

The Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination is made possible by the generous support of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), the Areté Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Daniel Cohen, with additional gifts from Judith Ginsberg and Paul LeClerc, Olga and George Votis, the EHA Foundation, Fondation Louis Roederer, Gerald Rosberg, Tom and Maarit Glocer, James Leitner and Tracy Higgins, Lee C. and Jean Magnano Bollinger, and Mel and Lois Tukman.