About
The hive, the founder, the place.
About Beehive for Life
A community born from a vision over a century old.
In 1902, the sculptor Alfred Boucher bought a parcel of land in the south of Paris and built a curious round building from the leftovers of the World’s Fair. He called it La Ruche, the Beehive. His idea was simple and radical: give artists a place to live and work side by side, so that none of them would ever have to make art alone.
Beehive for Life carries that idea into the digital age. Studios are wonderful, but a working artist’s life is global now. The hive can stretch across oceans. What matters is the same thing Boucher believed in over a hundred years ago: artistic solidarity, generosity, and the conviction that art is more powerful when shared.
Michèle van de Roer founded Beehive for Life from inside La Ruche itself. The community is the practice. The hive is the studio.
About the founder
Michèle van de Roer
Dutch-born, Paris-based, Michèle van de Roer is a multimedia artist working from La Ruche. Her practice moves between painting, drawing, and printmaking, and her teaching weaves technique together with healing and wellbeing.
She has held a Fulbright Fellowship. Her work is collected by the Musée Rodin and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and held in private collections worldwide. She is represented by Galerie Paul Prouté in Paris and Galerie Mourlot in New York.
About La Ruche
The Beehive of Paris.
For over 120 years La Ruche has sheltered artists. Chagall, Modigliani, Soutine, Brancusi, Léger, Rivera, Zadkine and generations after them passed through its narrow staircase and circular studios. The building still stands. Artists still work there. The light still falls the way it did in 1910.
Beehive for Life ensures its spirit reaches the world. 5% of every membership and every course goes to the Fondation La Ruche-Seydoux to help preserve the building and the residencies it makes possible.