Rather hidden from plain view on a bustling stretch of Court Street—housed, that is, within the former South Congregational Church, a towering Romanesque Revival structure built in the 1850s, in what is now the Carroll Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn—is the administrative hub of Residency Unlimited, a nonprofit organization offering an impressively multidisciplinary range of research, work and professional development opportunities to foreign artists and curators seeking temporary immersion in the New York art scene. Although it has only been operating for about five years, RU has already accomplished quite a lot—from securing endorsements from and partnerships with dozens of institutions in the US and abroad, to organizing scores of exhibitions and events all around the city, to hosting and furthering the ambitions of hundreds of arts practitioners hailing from essentially everywhere except the States. I recently had a chance to visit with some of RU’s most crucial beneficiaries and sources of creative fuel—i.e. several of its resident artists—and thought I’d share a few notes. (more…)