As a non-collecting museum of contemporary art, working with living artists is integral to ICA LA’s mission. Since our founding, artists have continuously played a guiding role in shaping our identity and our future as an institution, not only as the focus of our program, but also as vital participants in museum leadership and across museum staff.

Affirming our institutional commitment to center artists in all that we do and honoring the long history of the Arts District as a neighborhood where artists have lived and worked for decades, ICA LA’s Artist-in-Residence (AIR) program provides three artists with dedicated studio spaces adjacent to our building in DTLA for one year each. Invited to apply through a process of nomination, selected artists receive a studio; a stipend for materials, research, and production; and an honorarium. The first iteration of the AIR program concentrates on artists working in and around Los Angeles—a city with a vibrant and revered history of nurturing and developing the careers of artists that in recent years has become a challenging landscape in which to develop and sustain a livelihood and artistic career because of the increasing cost of living. The AIR program not only provides working spaces for artists to create, but it is also designed as a residency embedded in the institution, inviting artists to access our building, resources, staff, and community partners; to contribute to the museum’s public programming; and to participate in some of ICA LA’s advisory and governance gatherings. 

Since our founding in 1988, ICA LA’s program has maintained a sustained dedication to celebrating the emerging, the overlooked, and the marginalized voices of contemporary art and culture whose expansive practices often elude and resist the conventional limitations of art history and contemporary art discourse. Embracing this history, we see the AIR program as multi-disciplinary and multi-generational, supporting the work of both emerging artists and those who are more established in their career, but who lack the resources of time, studio space, and community and would be energized by the opportunity to be in dynamic relation with an institution like ICA LA.