About the Artist's Studio Museum Network
From Reykjavík to Cavtat, from London to Berlin and from Rembrandt to Bacon, studio museums are all over Europe.
The Artist’s Studio Museum Network connects, celebrates and champions museums in the former homes and studios of visual artists. Together, we form a creative coalition of studio museums of all shapes and sizes, sharing knowledge, ideas and best practice; promoting and supporting one another; advocating for the sector; and raising awareness of artist’s studio museums as unique and inspirational cultural destinations.
Allowing visitors privileged access to the fascinating environments in which great art has been created, each of our member museums has its own unique story to tell. We set up the Artist's Studio Museum Network to bring these stories to a wider public, and to bring single-artist museums, house museums and studio museums across Europe and around the world closer together in partnership.
We add new studio museums to the site regularly, and feature information on research and projects of all kinds relating to the studio museum. You can also access a reading list of academic texts and take virtual tours. Our aim is to encourage visitors to discover these places filled with the spirit and atmosphere that inspired their former occupants to produce some of the world's best-loved art.
The Artist's Studio Museum Network has been initiated by Watts Gallery - Artists' Village, the former studio-home of George Frederic Watts (1817-1904) and Mary Watts (1849-1938) in Surrey, United Kingdom. It is run with support from the Tavolozza Foundation and the Heritage Lottery Fund.
"The artist studio museum is a place historically associated with an artist and his or her creative activity, and where the artist created works of art. By artist is meant a practitioner in the fields of the fine and decorative arts whose prime activity this practice was, usually (but not necessarily) as a means of earning a living. The museum does not have to be devoted solely to the artist: the studio can be one component of a collection documenting the creative activity of a period, a movement or a milieu"