What is the one thing that makes life possible in New York City? As mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani would say, it is affordable housing. This was also true in the 1950s, when three women—all newly single mothers—founded an artist haven in a rowhouse in the East Village, a raw neighbourhood at the time better known for shelters like the Bowery Mission. Their story is the subject of the new film Artists in Residence, which had its world premiere on 14 November in New York as part of the Doc NYC film festival.
When the artists Lois Dodd, Eleanor Magid and the late Louise Kruger (1924-2013) bought their house together in 1959, each taking over a storey for themselves, they all had young children of the same age. Without husbands to tell them what to do, they put their work first. Dodd even got rid of her bed to make space for artmaking; to this day, she still sleeps on a roll-up mattress. But the three women were not only remarkable in their independence and prioritising their artmaking but also in their talent.
Louise Kruger Courtesy Heel & Toe Films
Dodd, a painter, hade numerous works from her perch on the third floor, using the window frames as borders in her depictions of the streetscapes and gardens outside. She was also the only woman among five founders of the artist-run cooperative Tanager Gallery on East 10th Street. It was the first in what would become an alternative-gallery district.
Magid—a printmaker, photographer and illustrator—founded the Lower East Side (LES) Printshop during the 1968 teachers’ strike, providing space for local kids to learn artmaking while the schools were closed. The printshop is still active, albeit in a different location, and remains the largest printmaking facility in the city. Magid also taught at Queens College for decades; because of continual attempts to get rid of women teachers, she kept reinventing her portfolio beyond printmaking to include photography and even computer graphics.
Kruger, a sculptor, learned woodworking and joinery with a shipbuilder in New Jersey and metalworking at foundries in Italy and Ghana. Her work was first exhibited at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in the 1952 three-person exhibition New Talent Exhibition in the Penthouse: Goto, Hultberg, Kruger. She also used the local community garden as an outdoor studio, in addition to serving as its head gardener.
Eleanor Magid’s Banksia Integrifolia Courtesy Heel & Toe Films
The three women’s distinct personalities shine through in Artists in Residence. The film feels like a version of Sex and the City where women viewers can actually identify with a characters: Dodd is gutsy, blunt, no-nonsense, adventurous, wry and unsentimental. Magid is kind, giving, sensible, romantic and committed. Kruger is private, single-minded, quiet, elegant, contradictory and unpredictable. And their work is as different as they are. Yet somehow, magically, they all complement each other.
Kruger’s death in 2013, at the age of 89, was what indirectly led to the making of Artists in Residence. It all started when the filmmaker Katie Jacobs—an executive producer on the award-winning television show House (2004-12), among many other projects—decided to move back to New York after living in Los Angeles for more than 30 years to be near her ailing mother.
Jacobs bought the second-storey apartment in the trio’s building from Kruger’s son, Josh. But before the sale went through, Jacobs went through an interview process with Dodd and Magid. She became fascinated with the stories the women told about the building and their lives. So she set out to make write and direct this film, her first documentary.
Lois Dodd Courtesy Heel & Toe Films
Dodd and Magid, both nonagenarians, are still going strong and making art. Magid has finally gotten her due for starting the LES Printshop. “I’m aiming for 100,” she says in the film. Meanwhile, Dodd is having a mini-Renaissance, with recent survey shows at the Bruce Museum in Connecticut in 2023 and at Kunstmuseum Den Haag in the Netherlands (until 6 April 2026). In 2017, she was the subject of a monograph written by the critic Faye Hirsch.
Artists in Residence will no doubt call attention to the remarkable work of all three artists.
“We all end up with a history that we didn’t plan on,” Magid says in the film, “but I was kind of thrown out on my own and I think I’m better for it.”
“How do I want to be remembered? The work, the work, the work,” Dodd says. “The work is who I am. When I’m gone, that’s all that’s left.”
Watch the trailer for Artists in Residence:
- Artists in Residence will screen tonight (20 November) at 7:45pm at Village East by Angelika in Manhattan as part of Doc NYC, followed by a Q&A with the Katie Jacobs and her team. The film is also available to stream online through 30 November.
