If you’re seeking a week-long, residency-style experience at MASS MoCA — with the support of a talented instructor and none of the stress of a highly competitive application process — explore our Workshop-in-Residence opportunities. These programs offer all the benefits of a self-directed residency, including 24/7 access to a private studio, a private bedroom, and open access to MASS MoCA’s galleries, with the added structure and guidance of a workshop led by a professional in the field.

We also welcome self-directed artist groups (10 members required) for week-long retreats on a very limited basis. These group retreats offer similar perks — studio access, accommodations, and gallery admission — just without an instructor.

Scroll down to view upcoming workshop descriptions, and email studios@massmoca.org to inquire about workshop or retreat availability.

2025 SEASON

Creating Time & Space: A week of mindful making with Joanne Dugan
September 24 – September 30, 2025
This workshop is currently full

Boiler House Poets
October 2 – 8, 2025
Open by invitation only
Details below

Abstraction Master-Class with Judith Kruger
October 10 – October 16, 2025
Space is available
Details below

Email studios@massmoca.org to inquire about attending any of our workshops.

Creating Time and Space: A Week of Mindful Making with Joanne Dugan

September 24 – September 30, 2025

Workshop description: Join visual artist, photographer, author, and 2024 Guggenheim Fellow Joanne Dugan for an artist retreat held directly on the grounds of MASS MoCA. The full-immersion residency-style format is suitable for visual artists, photographers and writers with an existing practice to restart, reinvent or expand. Utilizing Joanne’s signature prompt-activation style, participants will create intuitive responses to the museum’s expansive collections and inspire new work quickly, in unexpected ways.

A thoughtful framework of both scheduled and free time activities will encourage purposeful, dedicated time and space for artistic experimentation and mindful focus, away from the distractions of daily life and the need to project expectations on outcomes.

The flexible curriculum of guided daily prompts and mindfulness practices will allow artists to further an existing project and/or create spontaneously on site. Each group member will have 24-hour access to a dedicated private studio within the museum complex and will reside together in housing nearby. The cohort will also have free entry to MASS MoCA’s 250,000 square foot complex throughout the week, and instructor creative prompts will be inspired by exhibiting artists including James Turrell, Sol LeWitt, Taryn Simon, and Louise Bourgeois.

Risk taking and multidisciplinary work is highly encouraged and there will be private scheduled feedback from the instructor, as well as ongoing cohort interactions in a safe, productive environment. An instructor questionnaire and suggested checklist sent prior will help participants create a realistic and clear vision for what they want to accomplish while in residency.

Cost: $1,750

Included in fee: Private, lockable artist studio on museum grounds with 24 hour access. And 24 hour access to printmaking studio and color laser printer. Private bedroom (queen-sized bed) with shared bathroom and kitchen in walk-up apartments across the street from MASS MoCA. Welcome dinner on arrival day. Boxed lunches on museum grounds every day except for departure day. MASS MoCA membership benefits (including free gallery access) for the duration of the workshop.

By application/invitation. This workshop is full. Email studio@joannedugan.com if you would like to be added to the waitlist.

Instructor bio: Joanne Dugan is based in New York City and is a widely-published and exhibited visual artist, photographer, editor, and author. She is a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow in Photography. Her work has been shown in galleries in the US, UK, Poland, the Netherlands and Japan, and published in The New York Times T Magazine, the Harvard Review, Unseen and Photograph magazines, among others. She was recently awarded residencies at Mass MoCA, the Peaked Hill Trust and the Abbott Watts Residency for Photography and was a finalist for the Meijberg Art Prize at Unseen Amsterdam. Her work is widely collected and she is represented by Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles and Black Box Projects Gallery in London .

Dugan’s visual work and writing is published in seven best-selling books, including Summertime (Chronicle), and ABC NYC: A Book About Seeing New York City (Abrams). Her limited-edition monograph, Mostly True, is in the permanent library collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the New York Public Library and the George Eastman House. She has been editor and creative director for many artists’ published works, including the recent ‘Dune Shacks of Provincetown’ by Jane Paradise (Schiffer). She is an active mentor for artists and writers around the world and recently founded The Creative Current, a private monthly lecture series about artistic mindfulness and activating authentic voice. She teaches at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, the Los Angeles Center of Photography and the International Center of Photography in New York City.

The Boiler House Poets Collective

October 2 – October 8, 2025
By invitation only

In November 2015, The Studios hosted their first workshop-in-residence for poets in conjunction with Jeffrey Levine of Tupelo Press. Those poets bonded so strongly that they formed the Boiler House Poets Collective, returning annually for reunion residencies as a circle of women supporting each other in artistic growth. As vacancies arise, they welcome new members by invitation only.

The members in attendance in 2024 were Joanne Corey, Merrill Douglas, Jessica Dubey, Mary Beth Hines, Judy Hoyer, Kyle Laws, Deborah Marshall, Carol Mikoda, Eva Schegulla, and Wendy Stewart.

Previous attendees include Jessica Bane Robert, Erica Bodwell, Ann Dernier, Gail DiMaggio, Nancy Edelstein, Donna Fleischer, Hope Jordan, Marilyn McCabe, Katherine Morgan, Yvonne Murphy, Catherine O’Brian, James Sneed, and Victoria G. Smith.

Visit their website learn more about the Boiler House Poets or to contact the group.

Abstraction Master-Class with Judith Kruger

October 10 – October 16, 2025

Workshop description: Judith Kruger — who exhibits widely in the United States, Japan and elsewhere, and teaches sought-after workshops throughout the country, brings her pedagogy for masterful abstraction to the Studios at MASS MoCA. Her multidisciplinary practice address human-environment connectivity and their shared vulnerability, impermanence, abundance, and void. She is recognized internationally for her advocacy of natural painting materials and sustainable, historic, ecological processes based on years of research and alchemic experimentation.

Kruger has an impressive following of serious, practicing artists, working in all mediums, who cite her intensive, direct teaching approach as an authentic, life-changing catalyst for both technical and conceptual growth. This Master Abstraction workshop is not medium specific, thus focusing on many of the formal concerns that Kruger addresses in her own work, including depth of space, destruction, luminosity, ambiguity, perceptual shifting, and visceral material presence. This includes both idea-driven and non-objective work. Concepts will be addressed on an individual basis as a benefit to the entire group. Private and open critiques, discussions, film showings and relevant demos are included.

This is an opportunity for each participant to delve more deeply into their own work and medium in an immersive setting with Kruger’s and the group’s input. Each participant will have their own studio: 4 in the printshop area working with Kruger’s print tech and 6 in the main studio area. Kruger will traverse between all studios.

(Please note that this masterclass is not intended to provide novice-level instruction in abstraction or pigment painting. It is for experienced, self-driven abstract artists. Those seeking to learn the basics of Nihonga, mineral pigment and ink painting painting should consider Kruger’s introductory workshops.

Cost: $1,700 (no print), $1,750 (printshop with tech).

Included in fee: Private, lockable artist studio on museum grounds with 24 hour access. Private bedroom (queen-sized bed) with shared bathroom and kitchen in walk-up apartments across the street from MASS MoCA. Welcome dinner on arrival day. Boxed lunches on museum grounds every day except for departure day. MASS MoCA membership benefits during the duration of the workshop.

Space is limited. Email studios@massmoca.org if interested in signing-up.