Colonial Legacy: MacDowell Colony Executive Director Cheryl Young

Videotaped by Amanda MacBlane Transcribed by Randy Nordschow and Frank J. Oteri Beginnings MOLLY SHERIDAN: Why don’t we start out talking a little bit about your history with the MacDowell Colony. I know you came on board leading the development department with your great work with their endowment and now you’re executive director of the… Read more »

Written By

Molly Sheridan

Cheryl Young, executive director of MacDowell

Cheryl Young, executive director of MacDowell
Photo by B.A. King

Videotaped by Amanda MacBlane
Transcribed by Randy Nordschow and Frank J. Oteri

Beginnings

MOLLY SHERIDAN: Why don’t we start out talking a little bit about your history with the MacDowell Colony. I know you came on board leading the development department with your great work with their endowment and now you’re executive director of the colony.
CHERYL YOUNG: When I first came to MacDowell I hadn’t known very much about the place. I grew up in Massachusetts and had always been interested in the arts. When I heard about this position I decided it was time for me to move to New York because the development office for MacDowell was in New York and had been for many years. The executive director then, Mary Carswell, was fairly new in her position as well. She said [to me] that we have an opportunity to do something wonderful for this wonderful place. So I moved to New York and began to immerse myself in all the different aspects of the colony–it being not just for composing, but visual art, writing, filmmaking, and so forth. All the different arts that I enjoy were incorporated in one position, which really made it wonderful. We applied for a challenge grant and had gotten it–actually when I arrived we had already worded it–and we went about raising around three million dollars in the endowment campaign to meet that challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. That was very successful. The endowment at that time was only about three million dollars to begin with, so we had doubled it, which was terrific. Then we immediately applied for another grant from the NEA for winterizing the studios. That took us another leap forward, about another million and a half was raised for that. Then the [stock] market took off, so MacDowell is in really good shape financially. There are no fees for the residency program and that’s mostly because of people who believe in the whole idea that was started by Edward MacDowell.
MOLLY SHERIDAN: When I saw the PBS documentary that outlined the history of this place, it was really touching. I’m wondering if you could just summarize it…I realize it’s a ton of information. It all started with the relationship between this wonderful couple…
CHERYL YOUNG: There’s no question that, as they say, things are meant to be. Edward MacDowell was a visual artist as well as a composer when he was very young. He applied to study music and art at the same time and was accepted into an arts academy in Paris to study under a composer. He chose the composing route in the end. So he was abroad learning music but he was also taking in students. One of the students was Marian MacDowell who grew up in Connecticut. They fell in love and were married in 1885. They lived abroad a few years while he continued to study and work. Then they moved back to the United States living in Boston for a few years. He worked mainly on his compositions and they had a very, very simple life. Then he accepted a position at Columbia University as their first music professor and they decided to move to New York. One of the things that happened during the course of that was that Mrs. MacDowell said that she fell in love with a composer and not a teacher, even though he was her teacher. She really felt badly that he couldn’t devote more time to his writing and his music. So what they would do each summer is go up to New Hampshire and he would work on his music in the summer, as most professors do no matter what the discipline. She started to build him a separate studio because even when he was working in the house he was distracted by all the things that were going on in the household. She built him a log cabin a short walk, about a quarter of a mile, from the house. He would go out there everyday. She would pack up a lunch for him and he would go out and do his work. It’s where he was really able to focus on his work. He later became ill and they knew he didn’t have much time. One of the things they discussed is what they would do. What would she do with the rest of her life? What could they do with the studio they’d created for him? They decided to create this artist colony. It wasn’t a new idea, but I think it was new in that the programs that existed for short-term residencies were all sending Americans abroad. He was a founding trustee for the American Academy in Rome. Of course the idea there is a multidisciplinary one, as well as for artists to see another world and be inspired by another culture. One of the things he realized was that being in a community where you are learning constantly from other people is very inspiring for art and for creative purposes in general, but that there was no reason to leave the country to do it. You could create that kind of environment for the short term that you were in residence with these other individuals. He wanted to try that here. That’s what Marian MacDowell took on. They had their first artist in residency before he passed away in 1908. They had two artists come in 1907…
MOLLY SHERIDAN: The sisters?
CHERYL YOUNG: Yes the Mayer sisters. I think one was a sculptor, and one was a writer. They [the MacDowells] had actually built another studio at that point. The log cabin was used, but then it just took off. The founding of the colony itself we say is 1907. That’s when it was incorporated. Because it was a new model–short-term residencies here in this country–a place was built specifically for this. The colony model is permanent residence, where people would actually move to a neighborhood. Provincetown, Massachusetts is a very old artist colony, but people live there more or less permanently and the idea of community is a permanent community, or at least for most of the year. He just felt that the practical realities of needing to work and needing to have another life make it impossible sometimes to do that kind of thing. The idea that you would come for a month, or two months was really not something that had been done. Certainly building studios specifically for this purpose hadn’t been done. When Mrs. MacDowell went to her patrons and said, “This is what I’d like to do,” they said it was an insane idea. “It’s not practical! It’s a folly!” And she said, “No, this will work.” So she devoted the rest of her life, fifty years, to it. She started it in her fifties. She was a pianist, so naturally at the very beginning she was able to welcome quite a number of fine composers to come. She started a wonderful network of people who would nominate, that’s how it was done originally, by references.
MOLLY SHERIDAN: Did she continue to live there full time and interact with the artists?
CHERYL YOUNG: She did. She lived on the property in the farmhouse that she and Edward had purchased. It’s called Hillcrest and the studios are sprinkled on the acreage around the farmhouse. The immediate acreage she immediately started to expand and she bought all the property adjacent to it. She knew that she wanted the artists to have privacy so bought lots of land so she could build roads going out through the property. She herself designed the whole site plan, where to put the studios and so fourth. Originally, they used some farm buildings, but most were built. She went out and she raised money and got these buildings built. By 1930, by the time she had really finished what I call the startup phase and then the growth phase, she had about twenty studios built.
MOLLY SHERIDAN: What do you think her motivation was for all of this? Obviously this one woman, who had amazing tenacity if nothing else, has had a huge impact on American culture. You could look at the history of past residents and list off hundreds of works that have impacted American society and the world cultural community.
CHERYL YOUNG: That’s true.
MOLLY SHERIDAN: It’s just this one woman. What do you think about that?
CHERYL YOUNG: I think it was a sincerity of purpose. I think being around artists and knowing the creative process intimately as she did–watching Edward struggle through it, and she herself as a pianist–she knew how difficult it was to create something original and so forth. I think she felt there was not a support system for that process to happen. At the turn of the century, the government wasn’t as strong. It could barely take care of all the social causes out there. There was a whole movement of that period to try and improve society through universities, libraries, and academies of art. Just in terms of basic quality of life issues as well, like hospitals, health care, and education. She just felt this was part and parcel of that. She knew the only way to do it is for the individuals who care about it to take that responsibility on. It was very much a part of what I’d call the American experience of just doing it. She just gathered up people who were likeminded. Once there was a track record of a few decades, she was able to put out examples–this experiment will work. It wasn’t a vanity at all. First of all, she didn’t have money, really. They had a very small pension. So it wasn’t that she wanted her name on it, although I think she wanted Edward’s name on it to perpetuate his legacy. But he believed very strongly in this idea that artists can inspire one another through a multidisciplinary artist community. So she wanted his legacy to continue. It certainly wasn’t about Mrs. MacDowell; it wasn’t about her and what she could do. It was really about believing in the idea so strongly.
MOLLY SHERIDAN: As far as philanthropy goes, it’s pretty interesting. It wasn’t that she was pulling money from her own pocket.
CHERYL YOUNG: Right.
MOLLY SHERIDAN: Whenever she wanted to do something, she went out and got somebody else to pay for it. It was her idea, but…
CHERYL YOUNG: Well, she also concertized. She called it “concertizing.” She was a very good interpreter of his work, I’m sure that’s why they fell in love. She was so sympathetic and understood his music. So she would go out and raise money by holding these free concerts. It was very much grassroots. There were MacDowell clubs all over the country–especially with the tragic story, it definitely caught people’s imagination–and she would go out to Norman, Oklahoma and have a concert. Women’s clubs all across the country supported her, as well as sororities, fraternities, and the National Federation of Music Clubs. And she was very charismatic, as was he. I’ve been reading about his life recently because we’re preparing for the centennial, and people have called him a man of genius, rare in his insight and so forth. I think when you get two very charismatic people both together at the same point, there’s no question that something will ignite. It did certainly in the case of the colony. It really was the model for many to follow because once the track record was demonstrated, then others who wanted to do the same thing learn from the things she tried to do. She stopped and started. Not everything was a straight line. She had some ideas, or donors would come to her with ideas for an exhibition space on the property and she would try it. John White Alexander was a great painter, he was a friend of Edward MacDowell’s, and when he passed away his wife said, wouldn’t it be great if there were an exhibition gallery on the property of the colony for the painters to use. After a few years of doing that, Mrs. MacDowell said, this isn’t good having people on the property. So the gallery was turned into an artist studio. She created a pageant theater, an outdoor amphitheater, after a few years of having very spectacular outdoor festivals. She had commissioned works from composers for this pageant and it was a huge success in the town, but it took a whole year to plan. She said, “I can’t spend my time doing this.” This is getting in the way of the larger purpose of having the artist colony work. She had, what I would call, a true path. She would always go back to the mission after she discovered how it impacted that central mission. She was extremely intelligent in terms of fundraising, there’s no question. She understood what motivated people. She also knew that people were just looking for a solid place to put their wealth. In other words, that their investment would be spent wisely. She was always careful and practical, trying not to be too extravagant in some of the architectural ideas, and conserving funds. For several years she had a working farm and she fed the artists as well as provided space for them.
MOLLY SHERIDAN: MacDowell was the first of its kind in this country…
CHERYL YOUNG: Yes, in terms of being built specifically for that purpose. Yes, definitely. As I said, there was this whole movement at the time. I think there were others that started up and had failed. Yaddo had started up about the same time but because of the economics of the timeóthere was a recessionóthey didn’t really get going for another twenty years. I forget which year they actually had artists in residence, but it was sometime after.
MOLLY SHERIDAN: It probably influenced a great number of the others….
CHERYL YOUNG: Oh, it still does. We still get phone calls from people… (Laughing) “I want to start an artist colony and I heard about MacDowell all this time.” The Alliance of Artists Communities, which is the national association of residency programs, now has about seventy-five institutional members, many of them within the last twenty years. They all have a slightly different program or their own take on the central idea of a residency. They may be for women. They may be about involving community in art. They may be about environmental issues or social causes. Or they may only be discipline-specific residencies. There’s definitely been a renaissance. I just got back from the Res Artis meeting and there were two hundred programs across the globe. I think many of them are fairly recent. I was joking with somebody about how old we were and they were astonished to learn that we were founded at the turn of the century. I think we’re the oldest across the globe at this point, as far as it can be established. Again, I think that the fact that its privately funded, the idea that it’s in the country instead of sending people abroad, and that there’s no expectation of a product at the end of it are some of the hallmark ideas behind it. It has definitely taken off. People take that idea and expand on it.

The Application Process

MOLLY SHERIDAN: Could you venture a guess as to how many composers have actually spent time at MacDowell?
CHERYL YOUNG: Since 1907, there have been over 800 composers and that’s an awful lot considering the size of the field is very small although it continues to grow. And when you look at the range of style of those composers within that group of 800, it is a very diverse group of composers, especially now. I think that the world has opened up, even at MacDowell, within the field. The field is more welcoming to new ways of composing music. And now at MacDowell, with our panels that do the selection, we take between 20 and 30 a year. We have 13 pianos on the property, 8 of which are in studios. So at any given time we can have up to 8 composers. We tend not to have that many. It seems as though we have 4 or 5 within a group of between 20 and 30 artists. The variety is variable between jazz and atonal and whatever, all the different styles. And we have international composers as well. And we’ve changed what we ask for in the last ten years.
MOLLY SHERIDAN: What are some of those differences?
CHERYL YOUNG: We ask for a work sample and that’s the most important component in an application. The panels like to listen to the music, so you need a recording of your music. Most people will send a cassette or a CD. Some people will burn their own CDs. We also ask that you send a score. Some people don’t write down their music, so they would need to indicate that if they’re not doing that. And what the panel will do is listen to the music and sometimes read through the score. They can’t listen to entire pieces often. They’ll listen to segments of it. We ask people to cue it up to where they’d like the panel to listen. We used to say send a small piece, a chamber piece, and a large piece if that’s what you’ll be working on when you’re up there. We’ve now retreated a little bit from that, not to characterize it in any way. We don’t want to imply that we’re only interested in chamber works or operas or more traditional forms, so we leave it wide open. But it does help them understand where you are in your level of accomplishment and also in your level of talent. If you haven’t had any professional training and what they’re listening to is amazing, that helps them make a decision. It’s not whether you’ve been published. It’s never been that way. Half the people who go up there have never been before and for that half that has never been there before often it’s the first time they’ve had any type of residency. It’s because we’re well known and we’ve been around for so long, so often we’re the first place where people apply. What’s remarkable is that you’re able to get in, even when it’s so competitive. I think it is because the panels are anonymous, so even in the small world of composing where everyone knows everyone else, I think the panels feel they can judge the applications based on the work sample. And there is no limit to the number of times you can come. So you could come three years in a row, and in the fourth year you don’t get in and you think, “Oh dear, what could have happened?” Well, a couple of things could have happened. First of all, the panel could have changed. In the three years you were getting in, that was that panel because our panels rotate completely every three years. The other thing is the work. We ask you to submit a new sample each time you apply. You can’t get in with a past sample. You might have created a really great work three times in a row and the fourth time it just wasn’t as strong. And then the other variable is who you are applying against. If the pool is extremely strong, as it is in the summer when we get half of our applications… We get 1200 applications a year and half of them are for the summer session. When the pool is really strong, you’re odds of getting in lessen. What we encourage is for people to apply over a lifetime. If you don’t get in the first time, come back after one, two, three years… If you can, apply for a different session. If your life is such that you have more flexibility, apply for a session that is less competitive. It just increases your odds. In terms of references, we ask for references but to be honest I think a lot of people have access to references and the panels do not weigh them as much as they do the work sample. They may look at them, especially if you’re unknown, to see what the reference says, but I can just tell from the way the panels have been working all these years that they really don’t weigh them that much at all. What we really use it for to determine whether you’d be appropriate in a community setting and that’s really how the questions are worded. Would they be a contributor to the MacDowell community: personality-wise, work style-wise, and so forth. So some of the panelists don’t use the references at all. They don’t even look at them because they feel it should be based on the work sample.
MOLLY SHERIDAN: Are all the panelists you use necessarily musicians or is it a mix?
CHERYL YOUNG: The panelists are set up by discipline and some of the panels have a mixture of artists and people who are in the field. Says, writers and an editor or two. But for composing, it’s strictly composers. The panelists do not need to have been MacDowell fellows. We don’t just have an insular circle of people. But, again, because it’s anonymous, they really feel as though they can judge their conscience and we rotate the panel so there’s always a slightly different mix. And we have some safeguards in place. We have what we call an admissions committee, which is made up of board members in the field. They work to select the panel chairman and the panel chairman then selects the panel that would be participating. There is an approval process of checks and balances that’s always happening. Then, also we stagger the panel, so the chairman would inherit one or two panelists from the prior chairman, so it can’t really be stacked.
MOLLY SHERIDAN: It’s like the government!
CHERYL YOUNG: Exactly! We’ve been working at this for a very long time. I think we’ve got one of the fairest processes, if anything can be fair.

The Colony Community

MOLLY SHERIDAN: As far as the composers who are coming to MacDowell, a lot are first timers and others come back again and again and they are doing really great work and doing great work at MacDowell, they’re encouraged to keep coming back…
CHERYL YOUNG: Exactly, we call them colony hoppers actually. I think again, it’s the sincerity factor. There isn’t a support system for individual artists. There are very few ways for artists to support themselves in this country. And we’ve talked about it as a policy not to limit the number of times someone can come. We’ve decided that since we have so many slots–we have over 250 slots a year–that there’s really no need to limit the number of times a person comes and again it’s really to be supportive rather than to be exclusionary. There was an idea on the table for a while that it would be much more prestigious if we only gave it once. Some important prizes are only given once. But we’re not about making a MacDowell residency prestigious; we’re more about helping the artist, so again it’s that sincerity purpose. We really want to create a support system that works. And as long as people are doing high quality work, we want to support it. In terms of the balance of American versus international artists, again we felt that we were really an American artists community. But Edward and Marian MacDowell worked abroad. They knew how wonderful it was to have that different perspective of different cultures. Very early on she was bringing all these international artists to MacDowell. So that will always be part of the program. But we do feel that we’re here to support American artists. That’s our primary focus and I think it will continue to be even with globalization where you can go anywhere in the world and have a residency experience. I think that it’s good for American artists to meet other American artists even if it’s east coast, west coast, and people who aren’t plugged into what I would call the traditional fabric in the music world. People who are on the edge, outsiders, gain something from being brought into this community and really getting to know some people. It’s not really networking so much as it’s supporting each other. It’s not like business deals are being done at MacDowell because artists get their support from the outside more and more, from publishers or from the audience who are the consumers. The consumers aren’t in residence, so the networking is totally different. It’s not about networking to get your work published or networking to get a concert done. It’s more collaboration so that when you enter into the community you create some friendships and create a support structure that is personal and artistic.
MOLLY SHERIDAN: A lot of these artists come to this small, very positive place and they are from primarily urban areas.
CHERYL YOUNG: Right, right…
MOLLY SHERIDAN: Informally they’ll meet each other at dinner. Have formal collaborations actually started at MacDowell?
CHERYL YOUNG: They have indeed. Let me describe what MacDowell’s residency program does, and I think many residency programs are similar. What happens is that you are assigned a studio. We ask what kind of workspace you need and what your other needs will be when you are in residence. And some people live in the studios and some people are assigned a room in a residence. There are three small houses on the property with about eight bedrooms so it’s a shared residence. You can either live in your studio and work there, or you can find a wonderful experience in leaving your house and going to the place where you work. Many artists work in their homes. They have a little cubby that they work in or they work on the kitchen table. So, for some people, it’s actually a really wonderful experience to feel like they’re going off to a separate workspace. Breakfast is served at 7:30 in the morning until 8:30. Lunch is delivered to the studio. If anything can be a MacDowell signature, it’s the picnic basket that Mrs. MacDowell always made for Edward. She packed him off so he didn’t have to come back to the main house while he was working. And then dinner is a community dinner in the dining room. That’s the meal where all people meet who are in residence because not everybody gets up in time for breakfast. So, at dinnertime, you’ll be sitting next to all different kinds of people. We schedule it so that it’s staggered with people arriving and departing all the time. Then after dinner–usually it’s completely unscheduled, you’re really on your own, you can come and go as you please–generally what happens is that someone will have a presentation and so people might go to the library for a reading by one of the poets. It’s completely elective. People don’t have to go. If you’re working on a commission for the symphony and you’re on a deadline, you’d say, “I just can’t do anything. I’m gonna eat my dinner, have dessert, and run back to my studio and work.” But that’s when you really get to see what other people are doing. What that person you were sitting with at dinner is engaged in and you’ll say, “Oh my God, I didn’t know about your work. Your work is amazing. Tell me more about it.”

Collaborations & The People Behind the Scenes

MOLLY SHERIDAN: So this can lead to the beginning of formal collaborations…
CHERYL YOUNG: There have been some great examples of collaborations. One of the most famous is the Porgy and Bess story, which I like because they still have a connection with us because we are receiving the royalties for Porgy and Bess. What happened essentially is that Dorothy and DuBose Heyward met at the colony and she was a playwright and she read DuBose’s novel and she said, “This would make a great play.” And, apparently on the sly, she worked on it and transformed it into a play without his even knowing it, and then she showed it to him and of course he loved it. And then it was staged here in New York and it received great reviews and Gershwin saw it and said that it was terrific, and so it ended up being set to music and, of course, that collaboration took place outside the colony. But, just the way the whole thing transpired is a great example of how a work of art can be transformed by meeting an artist from a different discipline. The Heyward Foundation, which manages the estate, has been a consistent contributor to the colony, which has just been wonderful. Aaron Copland, who was very involved with MacDowell for a number of years as chairman of the board, created some of his best work here at the colony. I think that meeting other artists creates that ferment of possibility: taking different directions, to work with a choreographer or to work with somebody who sees something different in your work… Even with poets, the visual artists might say, “Gee, this would be wonderful to have visual art alongside these poems.” That happens frequently, but it’s never forced. Some people do apply together and they come and work on a specific project, but quite often, it just happens. It’s just part of the friendship process that takes place.
MOLLY SHERIDAN: That’s the creative side, but there’s also the practical side of these artists not having to make their own meals, not having to clean up after themselves…
CHERYL YOUNG: Well, we like them to clean up for themselves [laughs].
MOLLY SHERIDAN: Well, you have to get your basket back on time…
CHERYL YOUNG: You heard about the scolding if you don’t get your basket back on time!
MOLLY SHERIDAN: Practically, it takes about $150 dollars a day to provide for an artist there.
CHERYL YOUNG: It’s a little bit more than that now, but yes…
MOLLY SHERIDAN: So how many people are there working behind the scenes making sure everything gets taken care of?
CHERYL YOUNG: It’s a real operation and it’s more or less invisible. There’s a maintenance department of three and in the summer we add people because in the summer the grass grows faster. There are more people in residence and more light bulbs go out, things need to be painted and so forth. There’s a maintenance team of three in the kitchen staff, preparing all the meals and, in the summer again, we add more people because there are more people in residence. There’s a housekeeping crew that goes in and cleans. There are two of those most of the time and in the summer we add. Then there’s administrative staff: the admissions office that handles all 1200 applications and that number is growing. We’ve got two people in what we call fellow services, which is just helping people get acclimated and just facilitating their work. Sometimes someone will arrive for a residence with a broken leg and call us saying: “Gee, should I still plan to come.” After sorting back and forth how mobile or immobile they are, often they do end up coming and it just requires a little bit extra effort and we have this staff to make sure people can get around. You do have to walk back and forth between the main building and your studio unless you bring a car, but the walk we consider to be part of the whole MacDowell experience, especially in the wintertime when the snow is crunchy and the air is clean. And, of course in the summer when the days are really long, people will spend hours in the fields walking the trails. We do something called a town run. We’re close to Peterborough, which is Thornton Wilder‘s Our Town…
MOLLY SHERIDAN: That’s right.
CHERYL YOUNG: Thornton Wilder wrote Our Town at MacDowell. He also wrote an opera with Louise Talma, actually–a wonderful collaboration that took place here. They had a great friendship and they wrote an opera called The Alcestiad, which was produced in Europe but not the United States because it was a fairly expensive production. It just didn’t get off the ground. There’s an administrative staff in New York that does all the fundraising. There are four people in New York, plus there’s a board of directors with 60 directors, 14 committees… It’s quite an operation but what we hope is that it will be invisible to the artists. They more or less can go about their business and not have to think about all of this. The plant itself requires an enormous amount of work. There are 40 buildings and four miles of roads. We just completed a very large project to work on the infrastructure of the electricity, water, and utilities. The place is in terrific shape because of all the hard work of the staff and also raising all the money to make it possible.

Interacting With the Outside Community

MOLLY SHERIDAN: What was your relationship with Peterborough, which you mentioned is pretty close. I know that the idea is for the artists to be working there on their own, but is there an interaction with the community?
CHERYL YOUNG: The town has always been supportive from day one. Mrs. MacDowell was named Citizen of the Year in Peterborough when she was alive. We’ve always had a wonderful relationship with the town, but we’ve gone through periods where we’ve been more active or less active depending on the volunteers that we’ve had. But recently we established a program we call MacDowell Downtown where we have artists give presentations in the town of Peterborough. It’s voluntary. They let us know if they’d like to do it and it’s just started up. And then we also send artists into the schools in the local community. When people come, I think we really do try to make it clear that we don’t expect them to do anything but their work. It’s all about the process and whether anything comes out at the end of the residency is something we don’t talk about either. We don’t question it. You must send a project description so the panel knows what you’re thinking about, but you’re not held to that. You can do whatever you want once you get up here. And I think the fact that it’s a rural area and there aren’t a lot of distractions helps. The town is a lovely, little town. But people have cell phones now. It used to be that you’d only get mail; now you can collect your email at Colony Hall. So, you aren’t really shut off from the outside world. But, what people find is once they go up there, just the fact that they’re removed physically in the studio from the outside world changes their concept of time, changes the way that they work. And what we hear over and over again is: “You’ve changed the way I think about myself as an artist. I’m now going to apply everything I learned at MacDowell about myself, where I work, and what I’m capable of doing. I try to apply it at home.” And when I read those, that’s when I feel really good because I know it’s nearly impossible to make it last in a completely different setting. Some people have literally changed the way they work. Either they’ve stopped using email during the day or they try to apply some of the principles that have to do with time management in some ways. It’s also the fact that you’ve been given an opportunity and someone has faith in you. It’s MacDowell, but it’s really the panel, those peers who thought you were working on something really wonderful. In some ways, it’s an overwhelming burden to have all your obstacles removed. You go into that studio and you have no obstacles, so now it’s the moment of truth. Now you must do it. The only thing in the studio is a tombstone, a board that people write their names on and the dates they were there. And some of the studios might have Aaron Copland‘s name, or it might have Samuel Barber‘s name. You’ve got these names and all they’ve done is humbly sign these tombstones saying they were there and then all you’ve got is an empty desk or a piano.
MOLLY SHERIDAN: No pressure!
CHERYL YOUNG: No pressure at all!
MOLLY SHERIDAN: Is there anyone who can’t handle it, that feeling of being secluded and cut off?
CHERYL YOUNG: I think the seclusion thing has happened, absolutely. Some people have asked us if they could move closer to the main building. It’s not that far away, but if you’ve never been alone in a building before, you know, if you’ve lived in an apartment all your life, you’re not used to the silence. I think that there are some people who are blocked and it just can’t be cleared. They come the first few days and they’re really psyched and after the first four or five days nothing’s happened and they get very upset and might think this is not working. Often if they talk to just one or two other people who’ve had a similar experience, it breaks loose. Sometimes it doesn’t though and so we’ve had a few people say this is not working. I’ll tell you in the 15 years I’ve been involved with MacDowell, I’ve only heard about 2 of those and there’ve always been good related excuses like, “I’ve got a two-month old baby and I didn’t realize I’d miss him so much.” So, sometimes it’s just not to be and we tell them to come back another time. For some people, the residency experience is not the way to go. I think there are very few people it doesn’t work for though. I know I’m a believer, but I would also say that we’ve had 5800 artists come through and there’s only a handful that it really didn’t work for. Most of the time, because of the way the place is set up, there’s a way to work with it. There’s complete flexibility. So if you get lonely for New York, or home, you can go home for the weekend. The fact that there’s such a variety of people, if a personality clash has happened, well, you know, you can avoid them. There’s enough geographic space to do that. And, even if the evenings, if you choose not to participate in the presentations, there are enough people in residence where it may not even be noticed that you’re not coming. I mean, it’s noticed, but it’s not as if you’re relied on to be somebody else’s entertainment or friend. There’s collegiality and there’s an expectation that you’ll be civil but there’s no real expectation that you must do this or that. And there’s enough geographic space to do that. It works that way. If you’re looking at residency programs, these are all the different things to watch for: What do they really expect? Do I have to produce a concert at the end of this? How much time will I have to produce that piece? What will my workspace be like? What will the distances be between work and where I’m living? Will they be providing meals or will I have to cook? For some people I think one of the issues would be being able to leave if they have a concert that they’ve scheduled and it’s in the middle of the residence. How difficult is it or how expensive is it to get from point A to point B in the middle of the residency? And all the programs are different that way so you really need to look at them and find out what’s expected of you and what it is you need back in return.

Future Plans

MOLLY SHERIDAN: I’d like to talk a little bit about the future plans that you have for MacDowell Colony. Obviously you’re in good shape so it seems. The buildings out there are in good shape, financially you’re doing well, and you have new board members. But you were talking earlier too about how Marian MacDowell always came back to the mission after trying new things. Is there anything on the horizon that you guys are thinking about for the future?
CHERYL YOUNG: Right now all I’m thinking about is the centennial because 2007 will be the hundredth year of the residency program. I am thinking very much of the future in general: how we will celebrate that, and then what will be the platform for the next hundred years. What will be different for the next hundred years? I think probably one of the things that we really want to do is expand the program of stipends because right now we really award residencies, and that’s it. But for writers, for example, we received a grant from a foundation to give writers in financial need up to a thousand dollars in addition to the residency, making it possible for them to come. I’d like to expand for composing and be able to award funds to the composers who come, as well as the other disciplines. So I would like to see that happen in terms of just doing more for composers. I think that we have a wonderful studio on the table right now that’s been designed for interdisciplinary art. The idea being that it’s a large theater-like space. I think for sound artists or artists who really want to create in a space similar to a small black box theater or a large open exhibition area, for example, can get a feel for what that’s like. Certainly for collaborations it would be terrific. If someone was working on a music piece that also had slides, for example, this space could accommodate that kind of collaboration where they could actually try out different ideas. One of our first interdisciplinary artists was Meredith Monk. She’s wonderful in thinking of new ways to work, and working in teams. Sometimes she has come as an interdisciplinary artist. Sometimes she has come as a composer, depending on what her project is at the time. What is wonderful about the whole idea of interdisciplinary art is that you can really cross all those boundaries. I think more and more what I would see happening in the next hundred years is that composers are going to be able to expand the way they use music with other disciplines. Edward was an artist. He was a very visual person. I would love to see what he would have done with a multimedia software program with his music. I think MacDowell is really flexible. You can come as a composer and write poetry–happens all the time! And the poets are writing music! I think that flexibility will just continue and we’re just trying to provide better spaces and equipment to do that. Right now when I say we have pianos, that’s wonderful because it’s always been the primary tool. Now we’re seeing that all the composers are bringing their computers and they synthesizing music right there. That’s where I see the biggest change in terms of just how composers might be at MacDowell, trying to create a stipend program. Then also to create better spaces where they can really take off… Meredith is funny because she said, “Well, you know, I only need that small room. I just like to go and work by myself. Then I bring in the other people.” But I can see how some of the elements can all be brought together in a wonderfully new way that we can’t even conceive of. Where people come and go and are able to connect to the other world in a different way. Right now we don’t even chat in the studios. People have been, let’s just say, debating that for a lot of studios. I imagine it will take a few more years before MacDowell makes a leap in that direction, only because we still never put in phones. So I have a feeling that this will lag about twenty years behind in that way, too, resisting anything that’s going to interrupt the process.
MOLLY SHERIDAN: Because Marian MacDowell’s force of personality and vision was so much a part of this for so long–she ended up living just shy of her hundredth birthday–is there a spirit of Edward and Marian MacDowell still active?
CHERYL YOUNG: I think so. I think one of the reasons they landed in the Monadnock region because of this wonderful mountain. There’s already a wonderful beauty to the landscape, which I think is spiritual. In terms of the numbers of artists the kind of energy–a lot of people talk about the energy there, that they feel more energetic, alive, and open at MacDowell. Other thing is, again, we learned a lot from the MacDowells in terms of always coming back to that mission. The board is very much trying to keep that spirit and stay true to that. In terms of ghosts of the MacDowells and so forth, there’s the ghost of that desire to be supportive. People say there’s no negative energy here at all. There’s only positive energy. Suddenly the door will open and the breeze will blow in and it’s a very supportive breeze. That’s what you hear. They are very much present in that way. Actually the grave sites for the MacDowells are across the street on the adjacent property that we own and people make pilgrimages over there just to say thank you for having that vision and acting on it. A lot of people have vision and then they aren’t able to act on it. It’s wonderful that they persevered and really made it possible. Mrs. MacDowell said that if she’d had a child it probably wouldn’t have happened. She had a miscarriage and after Edward passed away she was really alone. The question was what would she do with the rest of her life. Instead of thinking I’ll just get married again and go through a romance again–she couldn’t possibility think of another soul mate–so she was able to devote all of her energy to it, and that is really what it took. She was fifty at the time. So when one thinks about whether your life is over, think again. You can start at any age. It’s just finding the energy and the optimism. Imagine the optimism of deciding to do something like this because in the 1930s a good portion of the colony was damaged by a hurricane. She had done all of this wonderful work. She had these studios built and they were all damaged, the trees were down, and it just looked dismal. And it just rose like a phoenix from the ashes. Literally all the artists who had been in residence got together and started fundraising campaigns for the place. That’s perseverance. It takes a lot of spirit to do that kind of thing.