Artists in Residence

“It was the smartest stupid thing we did,” Lois Dodd says of the three-floor building she would acquire with two other artists – Eleanor Magid and Louise Kruger – on East 2nd Street in New York in 1959. A decade before Greenwich Village became a hotbed for struggling artists to find their footing without paying much in rent, it took some vision on the part of Dodd to strike a deal with the owner of a funeral home a few streets over to own the apartment that she had been living in and create a creative hub for herself, Magid and Kruger without worrying about having to keep a roof over their head, a collective that would endure for nearly a half-century. To put it another way, the three defied societal norms and prioritized their art over traditional roles as wives and mothers. Through interviews with the two surviving women, now in their 90s, as well as their grown children, Artists in Residence is a heartfelt celebration of independence, creativity, and the enduring strength of women artists.