The Civitella Ranieri Foundation is an American artists’ community located at a 15th-century castle in the

Umbria it, Umbro (man) it, Umbra (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , ...

region of Italy. The Foundation provides four sessions of six-week long unstructured residencies every year to visual artists, writers and composers; and, occasionally, it organizes events for the general public. Founded by arts

philanthropist Philanthropy is a form of altruism that consists of "private initiatives, for the Public good (economics), public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private goo ...

Ursula Corning in 1995. In the last decade of her life, Ursula often wondered aloud, "What will become of my dear Civitella after I die? Will it be turned into a dusty museum?" It was at this time, with the help of Gordon Knox and Cecilia Galiena, that she began to grow Civitella's current arts program. Civitella Ranieri Foundation has hosted over 800

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

s and Director's Guests from across the globe.

History

Civitella Ranieri is an early

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass id ...

castle in

. The Ranieri family, a noble Italian bloodline, first settled in

Perugia Perugia (, , ; lat, Perusia) is the capital city of Umbria in central Italy, crossed by the River Tiber, and of the province of Perugia. The city is located about north of Rome and southeast of Florence. It covers a high hilltop and par ...

and has owned the land since the early 11th century. Ursula Corning, a distant relative to the Ranieri family, turned the castle into the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, which started operating as an artist residency in 1995.

Foundation

Each residency community at Civitella Ranieri Foundation is selected by a jury, and it brings together 12-15 international artists, writers and composers at pivotal moments in their careers. The Foundation provides studio space, accommodation, board, and covers travel expenses. Dana Prescott has been the Foundation's Executive Director since 2007.

Notable alumni

Civitella Ranieri Fellows have been awarded numerous honors, including Pulitzer Prize,

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

s, Fulbright Grants, National Endowment for the Arts Grants and Fellowships, and MacArthur Foundation Grants. Compositions by Civitella Ranieri Music Fellows have been performed by symphonies worldwide and have received awards such as the Grammy’s; Civitella Ranieri Visual Arts Fellows are represented in museum collections and exhibitions, such as the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

and the

Whitney Biennial The Whitney Biennial is a biennial exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, United States. The event began as an annual exhibition ...

; Writing Fellows have received awards such as the

National Book Award The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. The N ...

Notable fellows

Film

* Mabel Cheung *

Atom Egoyan Atom Egoyan (; hy, Աթոմ Եղոյեան, translit=Atom Yeghoyan; born July 19, 1960) is a Canadian filmmaker. He was part of a loosely-affiliated group of filmmakers to emerge in the 1980s from Toronto known as the Toronto New Wave. Egoyan m ...

Music

Martin Bresnick Martin Bresnick (born 1946) is a composer of contemporary classical music, film scores and experimental music. Education and early career Bresnick grew up in the Bronx, and is a graduate of New York City's specialized High School of Music and Ar ...

Du Yun Du Yun (traditional Chinese: 杜韻, simplified Chinese: 杜韵) is a Chinese-born American composer, performer, vocalist and performance artist. She won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her opera '' Angel's Bone'', with libretto by Roy ...

John Harbison John Harris Harbison (born December 20, 1938) is an American composer, known for his symphonies, operas, and large choral works. Life John Harris Harbison was born on December 20, 1938, in Orange, New Jersey, to the historian Elmore Harris Harb ...

* Alexander Hawkins *

Fred Hersch Fred Hersch (born October 21, 1955) is an American jazz pianist, educator and HIV/AIDS activist. He was the first person to play weeklong engagements as a solo pianist at the Village Vanguard in New York City. He has recorded more than 70 of his ...

Anders Hillborg Per Anders Hillborg (born 31 May 1954) is one of Sweden’s leading composers. Education Anders Hillborg was born in Sollentuna, and studied composition, counterpoint and electronic music at the Kungliga Musikhögskolan in Stockholm from 1976 ...

Johann Johannsson Johann, typically a male given name, is the German form of ''Iohannes'', which is the Latin form of the Greek name ''Iōánnēs'' (), itself derived from Hebrew name '' Yochanan'' () in turn from its extended form (), meaning "Yahweh is Gracious ...

* Tania Leon * Andrew Norman *

Pauline Oliveros Pauline Oliveros (May 30, 1932 – November 24, 2016) was an American composer, accordionist and a central figure in the development of post-war experimental and electronic music. She was a founding member of the San Francisco Tape Music Ce ...

Elliott Sharp Elliott Sharp (born March 1, 1951) is an American contemporary classical composer, multi-instrumentalist, and performer. A central figure in the avant-garde and experimental music scene in New York City since the late 1970s, Sharp has released ...

Esperanza Spalding Esperanza Emily Spalding (born October 18, 1984) is an American bassist, singer, songwriter, and composer. Her accolades include five Grammy Awards, a Boston Music Award, and a Soul Train Music Award. A native of Portland, Oregon, Spalding be ...

* Yehudi Weiner

Writing

A. Igoni Barrett Adrian Igonibo Barrett (born 26 March 1979) is a Nigerian writer of short stories and novels. In 2014, he was named on the Africa39 list of writers aged under 40 with potential and talent to define future trends in African literature. Following ...

Andrei Bitov Andrei Georgiyevich Bitov (russian: Андре́й Гео́ргиевич Би́тов, 27 May 1937 – 3 December 2018) was a prominent Russian writer of Circassian ancestry. Biography Bitov was born in Leningrad. His father was an architect a ...

* Brian Chikwava *

Henri Cole Henri Cole (born 1956) is an American poet, who has published many collections of poetry and a memoir. His books have been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Arabic. Biography Henri Cole was born in Fukuoka, Japan, to an Am ...

Billy Collins William James Collins (born March 22, 1941) is an American poet, appointed as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003. He is a Distinguished Professor at Lehman College of the City University of New York (retired, 2016). Collins ...

Mia Couto António Emílio Leite Couto, better known as Mia Couto (born 5 July 1955), is a Mozambican writer. He won the Camões Prize in 2013, the most important literary award in the Portuguese language, and the Neustadt International Prize for Lit ...

Kamel Daoud Kamel Daoud ( ar, كمال داود; born June 17, 1970) is a French-Algerian writer and journalist. He currently edits the French-language daily ''Le quotidien d’Oran,'' for which he writes a popular column, "Raïna Raïkoum" (Our Opinion, Yo ...

* Anita DeSai *

Rachel Kushner Rachel Kushner (born 1968) is an American writer, known for her novels '' Telex from Cuba'' (2008), '' The Flamethrowers'' (2013), and ''The Mars Room'' (2018). Early life Kushner was born in Eugene, Oregon, the daughter of two Communist scientist ...

* Mike McCormack *

Azar Nafisi Azar Nafisi ( fa, آذر نفیسی; born 1948)Following eighth grade, Nafisi's parents sent her to England for schooling from 1961 to 1963. Nafisi 2010, chapter 8, pp. 69-70; chapter 13, p. 115 is an Iranian-American writer and professor of Englis ...

* Robert Stone *

Mark Strand Mark Strand (April 11, 1934 – November 29, 2014) was a Canadian-born American poet, essayist and translator. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1990 and received the Wallace Stevens Award in 2004 ...

* Kae Tempest

Visual Arts

Allora & Calzadilla Jennifer Allora (born 20 March 1974) and Guillermo Calzadilla (born 10 January 1971) are a collaborative duo of visual artists who live and work in San Juan, Puerto Rico. They were the United States Representatives for the 2011 Venice Biennale, ...

* Emma Amos * El Anatsui *

Alison Bechdel Alison Bechdel ( ; born September 10, 1960) is an American cartoonist. Originally known for the long-running comic strip ''Dykes to Watch Out For'', she came to critical and commercial success in 2006 with her Graphic novel, graphic memoir ''Fun ...

Manfredi Beninati Manfredi Beninati is an Italian artist born in Palermo (Sicily) in 1970. A contemporary figurative painter, his oeuvre also covers installations, drawings, sculpture, collage and film. Biography After dropping out of both law and film school an ...

Xu Bing Xu Bing (; born 1955) is a Chinese artist who served as vice-president of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. He is known for his printmaking skills and installation art, as well as his creative artistic use of language, words, and text and how t ...

Joan Wadleigh Curran Joan Wadleigh Curran (April 27, 1950 – March 29, 2023) was an American visual artist, painter, and printmaker active in Philadelphia, known primarily for her figurative paintings and drawings in which she addressed the intersection of the nat ...

Yun-Fei Ji Yun-Fei Ji (; born 1963) is a Chinese-American painter who has been based largely in New York City since 1990.Yau, John"Alone and Together on The Stage of The World,"''The Brooklyn Rail'', June 2004. Retrieved May 19, 2023.Fateman, Johanna"Yun- ...

William Kentridge William Kentridge (born 28 April 1955) is a South African artist best known for his prints, drawings, and animated films, especially noted for a sequence of hand-drawn animated films he produced during the 1990s. The latter are constructed by ...

* Lat *

Kerry James Marshall Kerry James Marshall (born October 17, 1955) is an American artist and professor, known for his paintings of Black figures. He previously taught painting at the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In 2017, Marshall ...

Martha Rosler Martha Rosler (born 1943) is an American artist. She is a conceptual artist who works in photography and photo text, video, installation, sculpture, and performance, as well as writing about art and culture. Rosler's work is centered on everyday ...

Matthias Weischer Matthias Weischer (born 1973 in Elte, North Rhine-Westphalia, West Germany) is a painter living in Leipzig. Weischer is considered to be part of the New Leipzig School. Life Matthias Weischer studied painting from 1995 to 2001 and receive ...

* Sun Xun

Notable Director’s Guests

A select number of Director’s Guests are invited to join each residency session. Notable Director’s Guests include Vivien Greene (2016), Rosanna Warren (2015),

(2013),

Ann Beattie Ann Beattie (born September 8, 1947) is an American novelist and short story writer. She has received an award for excellence from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in the short story f ...

(2013),

Tobias Wolff Tobias is the transliteration of the Greek which is a translation of the Hebrew biblical name he, טוֹבִיה, Toviyah, JahGod is good, label=none. With the biblical Book of Tobias being present in the Deuterocanon/Apocrypha of the Bible, ...

(2012),

John Eaton John Eaton may refer to: *John Eaton (divine) (born 1575), English divine *John Eaton (pirate) (fl. 1683–1686), English buccaneer *Sir John Craig Eaton (1876–1922), Canadian businessman * John Craig Eaton II (born 1937), Canadian businessman a ...

(2011),

(2008 and 2011),

James Siena James Siena (born October 28, 1957) is an American contemporary artist. His art is typically created through a series of self-imposed constraints also sometimes referred to as visual algorithms —rules Siena decides on before sitting down to wor ...

(2010), and

Yehudi Wyner Yehudi Wyner (born June 1, 1929, in Calgary, Alberta) is an American composer, pianist, conductor and music educator. Life and career Wyner, who grew up in New York City, was raised in a musical family. His father, Lazar Weiner, was an eminent ...

(2009).

References

{{reflist Artist colonies Umbria Arts organisations based in Italy