Organizer Information
Villa Arson is a national public institution under France's Ministry of Culture, based in Nice. It is described as the only national institution dedicated to contemporary art that brings together an art center and a higher art school under one roof, and it stands among the notable examples of 1970s architecture, having been designed by architect Michel Marot. Opened in 1972, it unites a national higher art school, a national center for contemporary art, an artist residency, and a specialized library, with a mission spanning artistic training, support for creation, and the dissemination of contemporary art. As an École nationale supérieure d'art, Villa Arson hosts around 230 students on three- or five-year degree tracks, taught by a mix of resident artists, art historians, theorists, and roughly 100 external instructors, and it trains professionals who go on to work throughout the art and culture world — as photographers, designers, filmmakers, scenographers, editors, and arts administrators, among other roles. The institution's three combined missions — school, art center, and residency program — are designed to intersect, with resident artists and researchers regularly engaging directly with students and the exhibition program.
Title & Description
Curatorial Research Residency — Collaborative Practices and New Mediations
Villa Arson has created a curatorial research and experimentation residency dedicated to collaborative practices and new forms of mediation in contemporary art, as part of the development of its artistic, pedagogical, scientific, and territorial project. Conceived as a space for situated research, the residency invites a curator or researcher to spend a full academic year developing a project that combines research, experimentation, transmission, and cooperation. This first edition is described as a founding moment that will help define the methods, formats, and future direction of the new research program, developed in close dialogue with students, teaching staff, the institution's teams, and local partners.
The residency treats curating as a research practice in its own right — not limited to producing exhibitions, but understood as an activity of knowledge production, the creation of collective situations, mediation, and connection between artists, audiences, institutions, and territories. The resident will develop their project together with a group of students from the École nationale supérieure d'art over the course of the academic year, through formats that may include seminars, workshops, field research, research-creation processes, experimentations, public encounters, and collaborative devices.
Theme
Collaborative practices and new mediations in contemporary art — broadly defined as the arrangements, methods, and situations that create new relationships between artworks, artists, institutions, territories, knowledge, and audiences. Proposed lines of inquiry include contemporary curatorial practices, collaborative and participatory approaches, cultural rights, new forms of mediation and transmission, artistic projects developed outside institutional walls, the relationship between art, research, and society, and emerging forms of cooperation between institutions, artists, and territories. Particular attention may be given to research engaging with care, attention, hospitality, solidarity, or wellbeing as cultural, social, and political dimensions of contemporary creation. The residency can draw on Villa Arson's existing research environment, including its Surface Démange editorial research line and the Laboratoire International Associé Art, Société et Mieux-être (LIA-ASME), run jointly with Université Laval within the scientific environment of Université Côte d'Azur.
Categories
- Residency
- Curatorial
- Research
- Educations
Eligibility
- Open to exhibition curators, independent and emerging curators, researchers working in the field of contemporary art, and cultural professionals with a research-oriented curatorial practice
- International applications are strongly encouraged
- Requires regular, sustained presence at Villa Arson throughout the academic year, with immersion in the institution's life and the development of collaborations with students and local partners
- Presence of approximately one week per month is expected, distributed across several periods over the academic year
Program Benefits & Awards
- Furnished housing at Villa Arson during residency periods
- Residency fee/honorarium of €13,500 (all taxes included), corresponding to 45 days of residence (eight weeks of presence plus one week dedicated to the final output)
- A maximum allowance of €1,500 (all taxes included) for travel and project-related expenses, reimbursed on presentation of receipts
- A production grant
- Access to all pedagogical and technical resources of the institution, including the art school, contemporary art center, research and study library, international residency program, public engagement department, technical workshops, and workspaces
- Access to partnerships with Université Côte d'Azur and to the scientific cooperation associated with LIA-ASME
Application Fee
None
How to Apply?
Applications should be sent by email to: international@villa-arson.org
Key Dates
- Application Deadline: 15 September 2026
- Review of applications: end of September 2026
- Interviews: first half of October 2026
- Results: mid-October 2026
- Residency start: November 2026
- Residency period: November 2026 – end of June 2027
Location
Villa Arson, Nice, France
Additional Details
- The residency is not intended to produce an exhibition within the contemporary art center's program; it prioritizes research, experimentation, and project development instead.
- The final output ("restitution") will take a form defined by the resident in dialogue with the institution, and may combine a publication, an editorial project, a study day, a public program, a mediation device, a digital platform, an off-site project, or another proposal relevant to the research process.
- The residency includes regular monitoring with Villa Arson's teams; at its conclusion, the resident submits a qualitative and quantitative report covering activities carried out, collaborations developed, outputs produced, and perspectives opened by the research.
- Particular attention will be given to projects that show critical reflection on contemporary curatorial practices, interest in collaborative and situated approaches, the capacity to work with varied partners, and a strong articulation between research, transmission, and experimentation.