Artist Residencies in Israel
A curated guide to residency programs, production spaces, and research-based initiatives supporting contemporary art in Israel.
Israel’s residency ecology is shaped by a tension between metropolitan density, political geography, and the need for protected time within a relatively compressed cultural field. Rather than forming a large network of rural retreats, artist residencies in Israel often operate close to existing production infrastructures: studios, museums, non-profit spaces, foundations, art schools, and public programs. In Tel Aviv, residency models tend to connect artists working in residence with curators, collectors, and international visitors moving through the country’s most visible contemporary art circuit, while programs in and around Jerusalem often carry a more research-based or site-sensitive character, shaped by the city’s layered histories, religious proximities, and contested public space.
The most relevant contemporary art residencies in Israel are therefore less about retreat than about situated production. They support artists, curators, and researchers through studio access, mentoring, open studios, public talks, exhibitions, and forms of local encounter that can be difficult to separate from the social and political conditions of the place. Some residency programs in Israel work as bridges between local artists and international practitioners, while others function as slower, more discursive platforms connected to institutions in Israel, universities, or independent spaces. What gives the ecosystem its specificity is this close relationship between mobility and context: international artist residency programs are not simply importing outside perspectives, but placing them inside a dense field of historical memory, urban transformation, language, conflict, and experimental artistic production.
Selected Artist Residencies in Israel
A curated selection of residency programs supporting contemporary art production, research, and international exchange.
Artport
Artport is a Tel Aviv contemporary art center whose core activity is a residency program for Israeli and international artists. It combines studio time with exhibitions, lectures, conferences, professional workshops and an art book fair, positioning residency work as part of a public infrastructure for artistic production rather than a closed studio model.
It is one of Israel’s clearest residency anchors, linking professional development, international exchange and public-facing contemporary art programming.
Arad Contemporary Art Center
Arad Contemporary Art Center runs the Arad Art and Architecture residency in the Negev city of Arad, linking artistic production with desert research, local histories and public cultural activity. The program supports artists and researchers whose work engages the city’s modernist fabric, peripheral geography and community contexts, making residency practice part of a broader regional contemporary art strategy.
It gives Israel’s residency ecosystem a desert-based research node, expanding contemporary art production beyond the Tel Aviv–Jerusalem axis.
Israeli Center for Digital Art Residency
The Israeli Center for Digital Art residency in Holon hosts artists, curators and contemporary art critics for research and production within an institution focused on media, archives, public presentations and digital culture. Its program encourages residents to respond to the social and artistic context in Israel while engaging the center’s technical facilities and curatorial framework.
Its importance lies in connecting residency work to media art, archives and institutional research within Israel’s contemporary art field.
Givat Haviva Artists-in-Residence
The Givat Haviva Artists-in-Residence program supports recent art graduates through a three-month framework combining shared workspace, professional mentoring, workshops, public events and a final exhibition. Developed with attention to Jewish-Arab cooperation and minority artists, it treats residency as a bridge between art education, early professional practice and social engagement.
It contributes a socially engaged model, using residency time to connect emerging artists with professional tools and shared civic contexts.
Zone B7-P8
Zone B7-P8 is a desert-based artist residency in Mitzpe Ramon, structured around visual art, curating, research, art and technology, sustainability and community engagement. It offers shared studio space and encourages artists to use the Negev setting as a site for experimentation, collaboration, open-studio encounters and reflection rather than a purely product-oriented stay.
Its desert setting makes it structurally distinct, turning peripheral geography into a framework for research-led contemporary art practice.
This is a curated selection of residency programs. Explore the broader contemporary art ecosystem of Israel.
Back to Israel overview