For 30 years, the scholarship program of the Hessian Cultural Foundation has enabled 15 visual artists or artist duos to travel abroad or to live and work in the foundation's own studios in New York, London, Paris and Istanbul every two years.

Ms. Scholtz, Ms. Metz, why is traveling so immensely important for artists?

Catherine Deschka

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Scholtz: Albrecht Dürer went to Italy, just like Goethe.

It is a very long tradition for artists to travel.

Metz: When Goethe set out on his journey in 1786, he wrote to his patron, Duke Carl August, that he had to get out and needed a change of perspective.

And this need to get new ideas was found in traveling artists from the very beginning.

Our scholarship holders also look at foreign countries and everything they see is an input for their artistic work.

Scholtz: Of course it is also a creation of freedom.

Most artists still have a day job on the side.

And the scholarship gives them the opportunity to spend a year abroad, where they can devote themselves to artistic work and research in archives or collections without the interruptions that are otherwise inevitable in everyday life.

If you can do that without disturbance in your rhythm, that's the best thing that can happen to you for the development of creativity.

The youngest scholarship holders, who will soon begin their journey, will find a changed world.

Are the pandemic, the war, the energy crisis affecting the desire to travel?

Scholtz: In retrospect, we have gone through a whole series of terrible events over the past 30 years, especially in the studio cities.

Be it 9/11 in New York, be it the massacre in Bataclan in Paris, be it the coup attempt and various assassinations in Turkey.

These are all topics that have an impact on the scholarship holders, and travel plans or research projects also have to be adjusted.

A planned trip to Russia is currently not possible, the artist duo bellu&bellu is now making the trip to Israel.

Nevertheless, the desire to travel is unbroken.

So the applications haven't gone back?

Metz: No, we had even more applications this year, namely 310. In the last cycle there were 297 and in the cycle before that 169. Interest is constantly growing.

What makes the scholarship attractive?

Scholtz: A leap of faith and enabling “time without conditions” are perhaps the most important keywords in your question.

Have the experiences of the pandemic left their mark on the artistic works?

Scholtz: Scholarship holders who were in the studios were surprised – like Felix Breidenbach in New York.

He still came home in March 2020.

Metz: You can see the feeling of having to pack your bags right away in his current work.

Among other things, he now makes paper works that you can fold, take with you and later hang on the wall again.

And Antonia Hirsch, who traveled to Japan, created a television, "Bob", with human features out of foam because it was an important medium for her in the isolation of the pandemic.

There are many examples.

How many artists have you supported over the past 30 years, how much money have you invested?

Scholtz: We funded 207 artists, and with the new cycle we're up to 222. We've invested six million euros.

Does the investment bear fruit?

And how can success even be measured?