2025 Wrangell Mountains Artist Residency

The Wrangell Mountains Center (WMC) is a nonprofit organization inviting visual artists of all genres, performers, and writers to apply for two-week residencies at their campus in McCarthy, Alaska during summer 2025. The residency program aims to support artists with unrestricted work time and space, welcoming applicants from diverse backgrounds with creative and inquisitive minds. Applicants are encouraged to consider how they might engage with the local ecology, community, or history.

The WMC campus, located in downtown McCarthy approximately 300 miles east of Anchorage, includes the Old Hardware Store (built in 1911) and Porphyry Place homestead. The setting combines rugged Alaskan small town life with access to one of North America's most dynamic natural landscapes, positioned near ice-capped mountains, the Kennicott River, McCarthy Creek, and the terminus of the Kennicott and Root Glaciers. McCarthy is a remote location without an electrical grid, accessible only by private vehicle bridge and public footbridge across the Kennicott River. The WMC will provide room and board, a simple workspace, and can help coordinate transportation between McCarthy and Anchorage. There is no stipend available. Residents will be asked to share their experience with the public through demonstration, talk, reading, performance, workshop, or other means during their two-week stay (June 12-26, 2025).

Applicants must submit an artist statement, resume or CV (1-2 pages), a statement on the residency's importance to their work, a proposal for community engagement, workspace needs description, and work samples (10-20 images for visual artists; 2-6 online links for performers, video, dance, and music artists; up to 10 pages for writers). Selection is based on artistic merit, importance of the Wrangell-St. Elias/McCarthy experience to the artist's work, need or benefit to the artist, the artist's proposed community engagement plan, feasibility of ideas, and diversity of backgrounds and disciplines. Selections will be announced by May 2, 2025. Entry fee is $25.00. International artists are eligible.