THE HERMITAGE MISSION

The mission of the Hermitage is to inspire and foster the most influential and culturally consequential art and artists of our time.

The Hermitage is a leading national arts incubator and multidisciplinary artist retreat dedicated to championing bold and impactful new work, supporting the creative process, elevating the artist experience, and enriching the lives of audiences and arts appreciators around the world. An incubator for diverse and original works across all artistic mediums, the Hermitage aims to inspire creative minds to achieve their greatest potential. Beyond the unique and invaluable experience we provide to artists, we take pride in our commitment to historic preservation, ecological restoration, and dynamic community engagement.

THE HERMITAGE ARTIST RETREAT

The Hermitage is a multi-disciplinary artist retreat serving artists, the creative process, and the community. Located on a nine-acre campus in Manasota Key at the southern tip of Sarasota County, we provide accomplished and diverse artists with multi-week residences to create new works of theater, music, visual art, literature, and more. All artists are selected by our Hermitage Curatorial Council, composed of visionary arts leaders from nationally and internationally renowned cultural institutions. Hermitage Fellows have described their experiences as “life-changing,” “magical,” and “transformative,” regularly noting that they accomplish more in their time at the Hermitage than they ever imagined possible.

Hermitage Fellows have included eighteen Pulitzer Prize winners, multiple Tony, Oscar, Emmy, Grammy nominees and winners, Poets Laureate, MacArthur “Genius” and Guggenheim Fellows, and hundreds of extraordinary artists from around the world. The award-winning, impactful, and diverse original works created at the Hermitage are presented in renowned concert halls, theaters, museums, and galleries throughout our region and across the globe. Works created at the Hermitage have been shown at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center, The Museum of Modern Art, The Vienna Opera, Roundabout Theatre Company, Carnegie Hall, Disney Hall, Mass MoCA, The Kennedy Center, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, to name a few.

Audiences in the greater Sarasota area are offered a “sneak peek” into the works and minds of these brilliant artists through the Hermitage’s community programs, many of which are in collaboration with fellow arts and cultural organizations throughout the Gulf Coast region. In addition to the unique and invaluable experience we provide to artists, we take pride in our complementary missions of historic preservation, ecological restoration, and community engagement.

Now on the National Register of Historic Places, the Hermitage was built in 1907. The “Hermitage-Whitney” district was reconceived as the Hermitage Artist Retreat in 1999 and officially incorporated as a non-profit organization in 2002.