HISTORY
The MacDowell Colony was founded in Peterborough, New Hampshire, in 1907. The Colony's mission today, as it was then, is to nurture the arts by offering creative individuals of the highest talent an inspiring environment in which to produce enduring works of the imagination. More than 250 writers, composers, visual artists, photographers, printmakers, filmmakers, architects, interdisciplinary artists, and those collaborating on creative works come to the Colony each year from all parts of the United States and abroad. Colonists receive room, board, and the exclusive use of a studio. In addition to ideal working conditions, artists-in-residence benefit from the experience of living in a community of exceptional artists.

In 1997, The MacDowell Colony was awarded the National Medal of Arts for “nurturing and inspiring many of this century's finest artists,” and offering outstanding artists of all disciplines “the opportunity to work within a dynamic community of their peers, where creative excellence is the standard.” In 2007, the Colony celebrated its Centennial with a yearlong program of arts events and tributes.

In 1896, the composer Edward MacDowell and Marian, his wife, bought a farm in Peterborough, New Hampshire, where they spent summers working in peaceful surroundings. There, MacDowell said, he produced more and better music. MacDowell, a founder of the American Academy in Rome, knew that artists from different disciplines enriched each other's artistic lives, and he and Marian dreamed of making a community on their property where artists could work in an ideal place in the stimulating company of peers. In 1906, prominent citizens of his time, among them Grover Cleveland, Andrew Carnegie, and J. Pierpont Morgan, created a fund in his honor. The fund enabled Edward and Marian to carry out their plan. Although MacDowell lived to see the first Colonists arrive, he died in 1908. It was under Marian's leadership that most of the 32 studios were built. Until her death in 1956, she traveled across the country giving lecture-recitals to raise funds and gain support for the Colony.

At its founding, the Colony was an experiment for which there was no precedent. It stands now with more than 6,000 artists having worked there. Edwin Arlington Robinson was among the first applicants to MacDowell when his work was not known. Throughout the years, many others have come to work in Peterborough: Aaron Copland, Milton Avery, James Baldwin, Willa Cather, Jules Feiffer, Frances Fitzgerald, Oscar Hijuelos, Arthur Kopit, Studs Terkel, Barbara Tuchman, and Alice Walker.

Thornton Wilder worked on Our Town at the Colony; Virgil Thomson worked on Mother of Us All; Leonard Bernstein completed his Mass. Works of art created by artists while in residence are exhibited in galleries and museums around the world. Colonists have been Pulitzer, National Book Award, and Rome Prize winners, as well as Guggenheim, Fulbright, and MacArthur Fellows.

For more information about the Colony, please log on to the Library of Congress at www.loc.gov and type The MacDowell Colony on the Search page.