Defining the Impact of Participation in Artist Residencies on the Career Success of Dutch Contemporary Artists.

An artist residency is a great opportunity for an artist to devote a few months up to a year to build their professional network and pursue artistic practice without worrying about anything else since the artists are financially supported by participating in such programs. That is why artist residencies are considered to be an important catalyst for artists' careers. The Netherlands is known for a prosperous and innovative contemporary scene and the concept of artist residencies is rather popular among Dutch artists, therefore, this research aims to find the impact of artists' residencies on the success of Dutch artists’ careers afterwards. The “success” in this research is described by the following factors: artistic success, commercial success and an artist’s ranking in the ArtFacts database. The original data used for this study was collected through Dutch contemporary artists’ curricula vitae. Further, the data was analysed with such statistical methods as the OLS and 2SLS estimator. The main findings of the research indicate that artist-in-residence programs have a positive impact on the artistic success of Dutch contemporary artists. With regards to ArtFacts ranking, artist residencies have a positive and significant relationship with the ranking, however, the relationship could not be described as causal. No significant relationship was found between participation in artist residencies and commercial success.