The Watermill Center, the interdisciplinary space in Water Mill, New York, founded by Robert Wilson, has appointed Charles Chemin to the role of artistic director.
Chemin will take over the artistic vision of the organization, effectively succeeding Wilson, who selected Chemin for the role prior to his death in August 2025, per a release. Chemin will work in tandem with Watermill’s managing director, Elise Herget, and curator Noah Khoshbin.
Chemin first began collaborating with Wilson in 1992, the year that the late director and playwright founded Watermill. That relationship led Chemin to direct his own works independently—he went on to stage works at La Pergola National Theater (Florence), Avignon Opera, Théâtre de la Ville (Paris), Performa Biennial (New York), among other venues. He would also return to Watermill, beginning in 2009, to co-direct works with Wilson, including Mary Said, PESSOA, and Krapp’s Last Tape.
“In those [early] years, we were workshopping and rehearsing, developing the next plays that we would do,” Chemin told ARTnews in a recent interview. “It was very much something like a factory or a laboratory at the time, and that’s the spirit that we’ve always kept.”
“Charles is uniquely prepared to lead The Watermill Center forward,” Watermill board chair William Campbell told ARTnews in a statement. “His deep understanding of Robert Wilson’s vision, combined with his own artistic rigor, ensures that the Center will continue to thrive as a space for experimentation, interdisciplinary dialogue, and global collaboration.”
Since its inception, Watermill has also welcomed a diverse group of artists to stage their experimental work there, and that’s something Chemin plans to continue. “It’s from that spirit of those times that we grew and evolved into welcoming many more other artists,” he said. “We’ve tried to create an environment that is welcoming to artists from all horizons and all backgrounds. This aspect is present from the very start.”
Chemin has also been the artistic director of the organization’s International Summer Program since 2020, a role he took on as a way to help chart Watermill’s future after Wilson’s passing.
“We had Robert Wilson’s vision with us, always,” Chemin said. “There is a continuity, even after his passing. Wilson’s vision is very much at the center of it, but at the same time, turned totally toward other artists and … even more toward the evolution of contemporary artists of tomorrow.”
He added, “Wilson was a poet of the stage and of the visual arts. He’s leaving us something: sentiment, a fundament, a founding vision on which we can expand and create our own.”
