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About Omi
Omi International Arts Center is a not-for-profit residency program for international visual artists, writers, musicians and dancers as well as the site for The Fields Sculpture Park, a year round public exhibition space for contemporary sculpture.
Located in Omi, New York, a Hudson River Valley hamlet two and a half hours from New York City, Omi is situated on 300 acres of rolling farmland with spectacular views of the Catskills and the river valley.
There are four distinct residency programs: the Art Omi International Artists Residency, which invites thirty artists from around the world for three weeks every July; the Ledig House International Writers Residency, which sponsors forty to fifty writers and translators for up to two months each year; and Music Omi International Musicians Residency, which brings together twelve to fifteen musician-composers to collaborate actively and perform in August, and Dance Omi International Dance Collective which brings together ten individual dancers from around the world for three weeks of collaborative dance.
Since its beginning, Omi has been guided by the vision that creative work is a vehicle for knowledge and understanding that transcends political and cultural boundaries. To this end, Omi has hosted over hundreds ofresidents from 80 different countries to date. Omi provides residents with room, board, and a place to work. Our Boards, comprised of peer group professionals, review all applications. As an integral part of our programs, Omi broadens the scope of traditional retreats by hosting visiting New York critics, gallerists, publishers, collectors, curators and agents who help residents cultivate valuable career opportunities. Our strong commitment to fostering professional success and growth in the lives of serious artists, writers and musicians makes Omi unique. Omi International Arts Center works to further communication and exchange among writers, musicians, visual artists and dancers by offering international working residencies in a peaceful country setting.
Omi advances the scope of traditional artists' retreats by introducing our residents to gallerists, publishers, critics, agents, curators and collectors who help them cultivate valuable career-networking opportunities.Omi has always recognized the importance not only of nurturing creative individuals, but also of bringing the arts to the public. Each of Omi's residencies includes a public program-- the "Open Day" studio visits of the visual arts program, the Ledig House spring and fall authors' readings, a Dance Open Day Performance and the Music Omi Collaborative Concert - in which our international residents share their work with the community at large.
The Fields Sculpture Park, open year-round since 1998, provides hundreds of visitors with the opportunity to experience the impact of important international contemporary sculpture in striking natural surroundings. Educators, schoolchildren, and various community groups take advantage of Art Omi's educational outreach program, and enrich their knowledge and appreciation of contemporary art and sculpture.
Since its founding, Omi has been guided by the principle that artistic expression is a vehicle that transcends economic, political, and cultural boundaries. By inviting a synergistic mix of artists, writers, musicians and dancers from all over the world to create a diverse, positive working community, Omi transforms this guiding vision into an exciting reality.It has been said that "Life imitates Art". It is the hope of all those who work on behalf of Omi that the world will emulate our artistic community in finding ways to remove those obstacles which separate people and nations from one another.