A typical stay is about four weeks, with no requirements about the kind or quantity of work produced during the residency. After dinner, the artists often gather in the library to share informal presentations about the projects they’re working on, although there’s no obligation to participate.
That recipe has made the prestigious residency sought-after among artists, with over 4,000 applications per year, and just one in 20 applicants receiving a slot.
Resident Director David Macy said MacDowell’s program is the first of its kind, and other residencies around the country have been modeled after it.
Lane Turner/Globe Staff
MacDowell only opens its doors to the public once a year. That’s happening on Sunday for an annual award ceremony called Medal Day. This year, the award will honor Yoko Ono for her trailblazing work in performance art and artist activism.
“She was doing a bunch of things that are commonplace now, but back then, nobody even understood what she was doing,” said Macy.
Making space for groundbreaking art was part of Edward MacDowell’s founding vision. A composer, MacDowell was on the board of the American Academy in Rome, which he viewed as a place where Americans could look back at the origins of Western culture , according to Macy.
“He and his wife envisioned this as a place where people would come and look forward to where we’re going,” said Macy.
The couple first bought a farm in Peterborough in 1896 and spent summers on the peaceful property, where the composer said he created his best work. In 1907, they founded what was then called the Peterborough Colony to provide those fruitful conditions to other artists.
But it was MacDowell’s pianist wife Marian MacDowell who continued the program after her husband fell ill and died in 1908 at age 47. She continued raising money for their mission through lecture-recitals around the country until her death in 1956.
Suki Kim, a Korean-American journalist and novelist, said her time at MacDowell has shaped the course of her career.
She first came as an unpublished young writer, trying to embark on a new novel after failing to find a publisher for her first novel draft. The affirmation that MacDowell saw promise in her work, she said, fueled her to keep going.
“It changed everything,” she said. “I feel like I do owe my career to them. It really made me kind of believe in myself to start again, that confidence to keep going.”
Being a writer is hard; it’s financially difficult and lonely, Kim said, and her time at MacDowell gave her the resilience she needed to persist.
Novelist and poet Laurie Sheck said MacDowell gave her the gift of time during her first and only stay to date.
Sheck, a Pulitzer finalist for her 1996 poetry book “The Willow Grove,” said she spent the months leading up to the retreat working as a caretaker for her mother and husband and watching “stupid television,” when she realized she was in trouble.
“This was the longest period I’d ever gone in my adult life without writing,” she said. “Normally, I write every day. And so I felt if I could come here, I could sort of recenter myself.”
In the month she spent at MacDowell, she said, that happened.
Receding into the lush greenery off a quiet back country road, MacDowell is an oasis for the many artists who come from urban centers. But its relationship with the town of Peterborough has not always been peaceful.
In 2005, the Peterborough selectmen charged the nonprofit, which is exempt from local property taxes, a $50,000 payment in lieu of taxes, an attorney for the town arguing that MacDowell benefited the artists in residence, but not the general public, the Associated Press reported.
The organization successfully challenged the charge, and a Hillsborough County Superior Court decision in its favor was upheld by the New Hampshire Supreme Court upon appeal. The Supreme Court found the organization was obligated only to use its property for “stated charitable purpose.”
“That was very complicated,” Macy said. Looking back, he said he was proud of taking a risk to fight the charge because paying it could have created a precedent to charge other artist residencies.
“People don’t give us money to pay taxes with it,” he said. “We don’t have any earned income. We’re not like a school where we have tuition coming in.”
Since then, he said, relations with the town have been great. He runs two programs to connect MacDowell with the local community — bringing artists who volunteer into schools and into the community to do presentations and workshops.
Some in town agree.
“I like the MacDowell Colony,” said state Representative Jonah Wheeler, a Democrat who represents the town of Peterborough. He said MacDowell is a boon to Peterborough and the Monadnock region, and credited it with making Peterborough an international destination.
“A lot of people know the secluded artists’ colony on the hill,” he said. Still, from the outside, he acknowledged, there is a mysterious air to the place. “You never really know what the artists are doing up there.”
Medal Day is free and open to the public. The ceremony starts at 12:15 p.m., followed by a picnic, and open studios, when visitors can speak with artists-in-residence. More details are available online.
Lane Turner/Globe Staff
Amanda Gokee can be reached at amanda.gokee@globe.com. Follow her @amanda_gokee.
