Independent
Study Program

In addition to the general application, all Studio Program applicants must also submit examples of recent work with brief descriptions of media and scale. Please do not submit more than 15 examples. 

If submitting film or video examples, please include these as links (hosted on a website, Vimeo, YouTube or other platform). Film and video submissions should not exceed 30 minutes in total. If linking to a longer program, please indicate timestamps or sections to be viewed.   

In addition to the general application, all Critical Studies applicants must also include:

• Writing sample (no more than 15 pages)
• An individual research project proposal (no more than 4 pages)

In addition to the general application, all Curatorial Program applicants must also include:

• Writing sample (no more than 15 pages)
• An exhibition proposal (no more than 2 pages)

Those eligible for participation in the ISP include graduate students, candidates for advanced postgraduate degrees, undergraduates with a demonstrated capacity for advanced scholarship, or those who have recently completed formal academic study. However, there are no degree requirements to apply. The ISP welcomes international applications and can provide a J-1 cultural visa if needed.

The ISP provides studios or workspaces for all participants in a facility that includes areas to gather and share meals. The curriculum of the program is designed around weekly seminars with visiting artists, scholars and members of faculty as well as film screenings and readings. 

Participants are expected to attend all seminars and events, as well as work in assigned studios or workspaces at the facility. If you are accepted into the ISP, you are expected to be an active participant in the community of practitioners gathered at the program. There are no remote options for seminars, visits, or events, unless pandemic conditions, health concerns or accommodations require alternative planning. 

 The Lichtenstein Studio is a shared space for work and study among Participants and staff.  Participants have 24 hour / 7 day access to the facility for activities related to the Program, unless otherwise determined by the Museum. 

Credit may be granted by the students’ home universities for work done in the ISP. Most cooperating schools grant twelve to sixteen credits for participation in the program. Students need to make the necessary arrangements to receive credit.

If you have further inquiries, please email: laura_busby@whitney.org and amalia_skoparantzos@whitney.org

There is no tuition to study at the ISP. There are no application fees to be paid to the ISP.  

After a preliminary review of applications by a five person committee chaired by the director, arrangements will be made to interview final candidates. All interviews will be conducted remotely.

ISP encourages international applications. If you are accepted into the program and require a J-1 Visa, please read below for more information. 

J-1 Visa 

The Whitney Museum can sponsor a J-1 Visa classified as a “Trainee.” Please familiarize yourself with the terms of a J-1 Visa by consulting with federal and state resources such as BridgeUSA.  

Accepted international participants are responsible for completing all the necessary J-1 Visa paperwork, embassy appointments and associated costs. The J-1 Visa application process also requires interacting with Student Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS). If you already possess a Visa more suitable for living and working in the US, we strongly recommend that you keep the strongest Visa available to you.  

Elaine G. Weitzen Studio Program Fellows:

Nooshin Askari
Paige Bradley
Dahlia Bloomstone
Cheeny Celebrado-Royer
Rhea Dillon
Niloufar Emamifar
Valentina Jager
Ash Moniz
Daniel Melo Morales 
Iulia Nistor
Pegah Pasalar
Chantal Peñalosa
Alex Schmidt
Julia Taszycka
misra walker

Helena Rubinstein Critical Studies Program Fellows:

Joanna Evans
Sahar Khraibani
Stella Liantonio
Genevieve Lipinsky de Orlov
Adrienne Oliver
Stephen Woo

Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Program Fellows:

Kennedy Jones
Tamara Khasanova
Ntshadi Mofokeng
Beatriz Ortega Botas

2023 catalogue
2022 catalogue
2022 catalogue (screen readable)
2020 catalogue
2019 exhibition images
2018 catalogue
2017 exhibition images
2017 poster
2016 poster
2014 poster
2013 poster
2012 poster

KJ Abudu
Candida Alvarez
Itziar Barrio
Morgan Bassichis
Martin Beck
Daniel Bozhkov
Alejandro Cesarco
T.J. Demos
Adrienne Edwards
Denise Ferreira da Silva Andrea Fraser
Jennifer Gonzalez
Rachel Haidu
Shadi Harouni
Laura Harris
Chrissie Iles
Rashid Johnson
Mary Kelly
Arnold Kemp
Agnieszka Kurant
Joy Ladin
Glenn Ligon
Dave McKenzie
John Menick
Tavia Nyong'o
Meg Onli
Yvonne Rainer
Cameron Rowland Pamela Sneed
A.L. Steiner
Adam Weinberg

KJ Abudu
Candida Alvarez
Itziar Barrio
Daniel Bozhkov
Howie Chen
Jace Clayton
Valentina Desideri
JJJJJerome Ellis
Silvia Federici
Denise Ferreira da Silva
Andrea Fraser
Andrea Geyer
Jennifer Gonzalez
Joseph Grigely
Cassandra Guan
Cat Gund
Rachel Haidu
Shadi Harouni
Sharon Hayes
Barbara Held
Joan Jonas
Byron Kim
Agnieszka Kurant
Joy Ladin
Glenn Ligon
Lana Lin
Catherine Malabou
Dave McKenzie
Jason Moran
Eileen Myles
Sina Najafi
Daniel Neumann
Tavia Nyong'o
Liz Park
Paul Pfeiffer
Walid Raad
Michael Rakowitz
Paul Ramirez Jonas
Pamela Sneed
A.L Steiner
Aneta Stojnić
Mónica de la Torre
Constantina Zavitsanos

ISP Director Gregg Bordowitz is a committed teacher and active artist practitioner who, among many other accomplishments, spent thirty years as a visiting faculty member with the ISP. For twenty-five years, Bordowitz taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), acting first as a professor and then chair of the Film, Video, New Media, and Animation department. From 2013 to 2023, he served as the inaugural director of SAIC’s Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts program. An ISP alumnus from the 1985/86 class, Bordowitz succeeded founding ISP director Ron Clark, who retired in June 2023. Clark’s leadership and vision over five decades supported generations of artists, curators, and critics and made the ISP one of the most respected and coveted programs in the world.

Bordowitz is also a renowned artist filmmaker, writer, and activist whose work has been exhibited at the Whitney, New Museum, Artists Space, The Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Bonner Kunstverein, and Tate Modern, Camden Arts Centre, among others. His work was the subject of a traveling retrospective spanning thirty years of activity—Gregg Bordowitz: I Wanna Be Well—first organized by the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, in 2018. In the 1980s, Bordowitz focused his creative practice on responding to the AIDS crisis. He organized and documented numerous protests against government inaction and advocated for health education and harm reduction as a member of the groundbreaking AIDS activist group ACT UP. He also served as a founding member of the 1980s video/film collectives Testing the Limits and Diva TV.

“My engagement with the ISP, as a participant and then faculty for over thirty years, shapes my ongoing education as an artist and a teacher. Study is a way of life. Teaching is the art of learning. The teacher teaches learning, as learning teaches the students and teaches the teacher to teach. This is an ongoing process of continually renewing amazement.”

ISP Associate Director Sara Nadal-Melsió is a Catalan writer, curator, and teacher committed to collaborative thinking, alternative literacies, and collective learning practices. She has taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, New York University, SOMA in Mexico City, and Eina Idea in Barcelona, and has been a writer-in-residence at the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia. Her essays have appeared in various academic journals, edited volumes, and museum catalogues. Nadal-Melsió is the co-author of Alrededor de/ Around and the editor of two special issues on cinema, The Invisible Tradition: Avant-Garde Catalan Cinema under Late Francoism and The Militant Image: Temporal Disturbances of the Political Imagination. To accompany a survey exhibition on Allora & Calzadilla that she co-curated at the Fundació Tápies in Barcelona, Nadal-Melsió wrote the book essay To Be All Ears, To Be in the World: Acoustic Relation in Allora & Calzadilla and edited a companion volume on the Puerto Rican crisis, A Modest Proposal: Puerto Rico’s Crucible. She is the co-author of Politically Red (MIT, 2023), and her book Europe and the Wolf: Political Variations on a Musical Concept is forthcoming from Zone Books.

Letter from the Associate Director 

What does it entail to read, write, curate, and produce art together in one place for nine months?  How does the sociality of a sustained conversation embedded in the ISP’s forty-year living legacy of alternative pedagogies, part of a memory transmitted intergenerationally, and housed in an artist’s studio and home, intensify a collective experience of making and of study? How does the material anchor of a shared space provide the pause and the shelter that will allow ideas the time to transform, grow, accumulate, circulate, and expand amid the social, political, and environmental calamities of our time? How to stay with the trouble but also insist on giving one another the time that will allow our collective imagination, the sturdiest infrastructure of bodies and minds, to become a practice of freedom that finds strength in our capacity to relate to one another as we continue imagine different beginnings and different ends? Engaging with these questions demands a creative labor of a different order, one that is contiguous with the wonder, surprise, friction, and pleasure of a collaboration that exceeds individual identities in order maximize, experiment, materialize, and aggregate into a resource that can be shared. 

Laura Busby (she/her) was named Manager of the ISP in 2023. Previously, she served as Coordinator in the director’s office at the Whitney Museum from 2021 to 2023. As Coordinator, she supported then-Director Adam Weinberg with the renovation efforts to transform Roy Lichtenstein’s previous home and studio and the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation into a permanent home for the ISP. 

As a member of the ISP team, Busby works closely with the Director and Associate Director, Whitney Museum staff, and has broad responsibility for all administrative aspects of the ISP. Busby received her undergraduate degree in art history from the University of British Columbia in Canada and earned her MA in visual arts administration from New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development where she received the 2021 VAA Alumni Thesis Commendation Award on her paper titled Unbuilt in the City of Glass: Global Pressures on a Regional Art Museum. Busby's research explored sustainable leadership strategies, healthy work environments and community relations, and institutional values within organizations. 

Amalia Skoparantzos (she/her) joined the ISP team April 2023. Before joining ISP, she worked in the director’s office at the Whitney Museum playing a key role during the pivotal leadership transition from Adam Weinberg to Scott Rothkopf.  

As a member of the ISP team, Amalia supports the seamless execution of daily programming and the planning and coordination of the program’s signature annual capstone events. Collaborating closely with the ISP Manager, she is involved in a wide range of administrative tasks, ensuring the smooth operation of the department’s initiatives. Skoparantzos received her MA in Museum Studies from the City College of New York.  

Carolina Brown (she/her) is the Facilities Supervisor at ISP, a role she assumed full-time in January 2024. She has been a part of the Whitney Museum facilities team since 2018. In her current position, Carolina is responsible for overseeing the maintenance of the three-floor ISP facility. She works closely with both Museum and ISP teams to ensure the seamless operation of the programming spaces, ensuring everything runs smoothly and efficiently.