Once a year, the oldest, most prestigious multidisciplinary artist residency program in the United States opens its doors to the public. Better yet, opens the artists’ studios. That day is coming. Medal Day. Sunday, June 28^th at MacDowell in Peterborough, New Hampshire, 75 miles northwest of Boston.

MacDowell debuted as the nation’s first artist residency program in 1907. Composer Edward MacDowell and pianist Marian MacDowell established the program to nurture the arts by providing exceptional creative individuals with an inspiring environment to produce enduring works of the imagination.

“You make this pilgrimage into the woods; it’s a difficult place to get to, residencies are intentionally quite isolated,” MacDowell’s Executive Director Chiwoniso Kaitano told me during a video interview. "It feels like a portal almost. You’re in a place out of time, it could be 1972, it could be 1907, it could be 2056. It is a place that has this constancy in what we do and the community that comes there; it's very tangible when you're on campus. I have a board member who calls it a place of ancestral conversations. I love that because when you're there, there's this palpable energy of all the artists who have come before yand have concentrated and focused their energy into creating into this specific space, you feel that.”

Artists like author James Baldwin, composer Leonard Bernstein, and painter Georgia O’Keeffe. Titans of the 20^th century. Household names.

“There is a certain mythology around secret art creation spaces, and I think for me the big surprise was seeing that everything I’d heard about MacDowell –it's a very special place, very special community, there's a special energy there–all of that has turned out to be true,” Kaitano added.

Critical to MacDowell is the “distraction-free environment” it offers invitees. No kids, no spouses, no traffic noise, no sirens, no errands, no mail. No foolishness. Only creativity.

During their time at MacDowell, Fellows are granted the gift of uninterrupted focus, supported by a private studio, comfortable accommodations, and three thoughtfully prepared meals each day.

“MacDowell is almost 125 years old, and the formula at its core is freedom, time, and space to create. You’re free to do what you want when you’re at McDowell,” Kaitano explained. “You have the time because you’re removed from your everyday life and you have the space–you’ve got this whole campus–and the other thing is community. It's a community of artists.”

MacDowell’s creative mission pioneered the radical, but simple idea that artists would benefit greatly from immersion in a multi-disciplinary community of exceptionally talented peers where intellectual exchange and ideal working conditions are the norm.

“You’re in very special moment where you’re away from your everyday life, away from family, groceries, your day job, and you’re free to focus on your practice and focus on your craft and the one thing you’re creating, but you’re doing it within a community of other people who are also there to do the same thing,” Kaitano added.

Over the past century, MacDowell has welcomed more than 8,800 Fellows working in seven disciplines: architecture, film/video, interdisciplinary arts, literature, music composition, theatre, visual arts. Fellows have accumulated more than 100 Pulitzer prizes, 31 Tony Awards, over 1,000 Guggenheim Fellowships, Grammy Awards, Academy Awards, and dozens of National Medals for the Arts, National Book Awards, MacArthur Fellowships, and Rome Prizes.

Fellows are accepted solely based on the artistic excellence of their work as evaluated by independent panels of discipline-specific experts.

Roughly 300 Fellows are welcomed annually to utilize 30 artist studios across MacDowell’s 450-acre campus. Fellows can arrive and depart at their choosing, year-round. Artists show up and leave almost daily. A typical stay lasts four weeks. MacDowell never closes, aiming to be as convenient to Fellows as possible.

American art and culture have MacDowell’s fingerprints all over them.

“Before anything is in a museum or a bookstore, or before you’re seeing it at a movie theater, or watching and streaming on TV, an artist created something somewhere, and very often, it’s a quiet space like MacDowell,” Kaitano said. “We are the blueprint. We are the origin story. Everything you engage with artistically out in the world has a beginning, and that beginning is a quiet space like MacDowell.”

Medal Day

The Edward MacDowell Medal has been awarded annually since 1960 to an individual artist who has made an outstanding contribution to their field. These artists include Bernstein and O’Keeffe along with John Updike, I.M. Pei, Stephen Sondheim, and Toni Morrison to name a few. OK, a few more: Ellsworth Kelly, Nam June Paik, David Lynch, Jasper Johns, Louise Bourgeois, Robert Motherwell. A few more: Yoko Ono, Roseanne Cash, Nan Goldin, Kiki Smith.

“The Medal itself is one of the greatest awards in American arts and letters and culture. If you look at the list of the people who have received the award, it is a who’s who of folks who have been impactful on the culture–it is amazing,” Kaitano said. “When I arrived at McDowell and I learned about the Edward McDowell Medal, I was like, ‘How come this isn't front page of The New York Times culture section?’ Part of it might be that there's no monetary award. It is an honorific, but it is an incredible honorific, and if you are lucky enough to be a recipient, you land in a community of 65 folks who have impacted art and culture in indelible ways.”

The artistic discipline in which the award is given rotates in order to celebrate all of the creative fields practiced at MacDowell. This year, music, and Chicago-born composer and multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton (b. 1945). Braxton was chosen by this year’s Medal selection panel, chaired by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Tyshawn Sorey and compromising of luminaries of the arts world.

In celebration of Medal Day, MacDowell opens to the public for the only time all year with free programs.

On Thursday, June 25, guests are encouraged to attend the Hancock Farmers and Artisans Market featuring 20-plus vendors and food trucks from 4:00 to 7:00 PM. There will be a jazz quartet performance at 6:00.

Saturday, Medal Day at Historic Harrisville from 12:00 to 2:30 PM, allows visitors to tour the studios of MacDowell and local artists, artisans, and small businesses of Historic Harrisville. At 2:30, there will be a conversation with music critic Nate Chinen and composer and MacDowell Fellow Du Yun ('22).

The main event comes Sunday with the awarding of the Medal to Braxton at 12:15 followed by a short performance from Sorey.

“After that, we have a picnic on the MacDowell grounds, 1,000 people sitting on blankets eating delicious food that is prepared locally, and then we have our open studios,” Kaitano explained. “The public are invited to go and see MacDowell artists in residence, and this year we’ve got writers who'll be doing readings from their work, filmmakers, visual artists will be opening their studio spaces to show their works in progress, a couple of choreographers. It's a special day to interact and experience with art and artists.”

The picnic will be held from 1:00 to 2:00, and then open studios through 4:00, and not again until next year.

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