Applications open
Application window: January 6–February 7, 2025
The Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program (ISP) is accepting 2025–26 applications from January 6 through February 7, 2025 for all three programs—the Studio Program, Critical Studies Program, and Curatorial Program.
The ISP is an experimental study community dedicated to fostering critical thinking, cross-disciplinary scholarship and writing, and multimedia artistic practices. The ISP cultivates a rigorous intellectual environment where participants are encouraged to engage deeply with contemporary issues through extended conversation and collaboration. Through seminars, reading groups, workshops, screenings, performances, poetry readings, studio visits, and an array of collaborative endeavors, the program nurtures and challenges the creative processes of artists, curators, and scholars who are committed to innovative, sustainable, and activist practices.
The ISP—a core component of the Whitney’s role as a champion of American art and artists since 1968—has instructed more than two generations of artists, curators, art historians, and critics, providing participants with the instruction, space, and support needed to pursue their artistic endeavors. Alumni of the program include artists Jennifer Allora, Gregg Bordowitz, Tony Cokes, Danielle Dean, Mark Dion, Andrea Fraser, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Renée Green, Jenny Holzer, Emily Jacir, Glenn Ligon, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Julian Schnabel; critics and art historians Huey Copeland, Miwon Kwon, Pamela M. Lee, and Roberta Smith; and curators Carlos Basualdo, Naomi Beckwith, and Sheena Wagstaff, among many others. The renowned program is housed in artist Roy Lichtenstein’s former home and studio in Greenwich Village.
The ISP consists of three interrelated parts: Studio Program, Critical Studies Program, and Curatorial Program. The ISP provides a setting within which students pursuing art practice, curatorial work, art historical scholarship, and critical writing engage in ongoing discussions and debates that examine the historical, social, and intellectual conditions of artistic production. The program encourages the theoretical and critical study of the practices, institutions, and discourses that constitute the field of culture.
Each year fifteen students are selected to participate in the Studio Program, four in the Curatorial Program, and six in the Critical Studies Program. Curatorial and critical studies students are designated as Helena Rubinstein Fellows in recognition of the substantial support provided to the program by the Helena Rubinstein Foundation. The program begins in September and concludes at the end of the following May.
The 2025 application is open from Monday, January 6 and closes at the end of day Friday, February 7, 2025 (at midnight). There are no application fees and no tuition costs for the ISP.
Applications are submitted online through SlideRoom via the ISP website. Please do not mail your application. For more information, including application instructions, visit here.
Application deadline: February 7, 2025 (at midnight)
