Nida Art Colony or NAC is an interdisciplinary art, education & residency center. It is a new subdivision of the Vilnius Academy of Arts. It is developed under the EEA and Norway Grants support. The project started in 2009. NAC  will open in February 2011.

The overall objective of the NAC project is to improve the quality of art and design education in Lithuania and to implement innovations in the field of art education by promoting international cooperation. By launching the Nida Artist-in-residence Programme NAC also aims to create favourable conditions for creative contemporary art practices.

The main forms of NAC activities are international workshops, summer schools, exhibitions, conferences, video screenings and the artistst-in-residence programme. In June, July and September the NAC will house summer workshops of the Vilnius Academy of Arts (these workshops constitute a part of the curriculum and are organised by the Academy‘s departments themselves). All other events are subject to planing.

Nida Art Colony is on the Curonian Spit, which is a peninsular dividing the Curonian Lagoon and the Baltic Sea. In the year 2000, the Curonian Spit was included into the UNESCO World Heritage List as one of the most beautiful and unique cultural landscapes of Europe. The Curonian Spit is a National park with sand dunes and pitch pine forests as characteristic features of its landscape. Nida settlement is the administrative centre of Neringa. A century ago it had a high reputation within the artistic world: there was an active Art Colony established by German artists-expressionists in the 2nd half of the 19th century-the beginning of the 20th century. Artists like Max Pechstein and Karl Schmidt-Rotluff, writers like the Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann, composers and actors prized its landscape and ambience.

Website http://nidacolony.lt