Offering a free intensive, multi-year fine art skills education to local aspiring artists at the world’s most beautiful natural destinations
The world’s first private resort collection, ÀNI not only offers exclusive retreats in the most beautiful and far-flung corners of the earth. The brand, founded by philanthropist and arts patron Tim Reynolds, is also behind the non-profit ÀNI Art Academies, which provides an intensive, multi-year art skills education to aspiring artists at absolutely no personal cost. Designed to promote creative freedom through logic and discipline, programs utilize the successful curriculum developed by artist, Anthony J. Waichulis, and graduates around the world have gone on to lead highly successful careers as sought-after artists and art educators, benefiting their families and communities alike.
Established in 2010, ÀNI Art Academies currently has six schools worldwide, two in the United States in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and four that are situated just minutes from ÀNI’s private resorts in Thailand, Sri Lanka, Anguilla, and the Dominican Republic. While many luxury hospitality brands establish outreach programs to support the communities in which they operate, ÀNI Private Resorts was in fact founded at the same time as ÀNI Art Academies to support and grow the art organization and help uplift the local communities of some of the world’s most beautiful natural destinations.
Co-founder of a thriving Wall Street trading firm and founder of the Tim Reynolds Foundation, Tim’s interest in art as a means of social upliftment began with his own artistic training. His fascination with Irving Stone’s argument that both Michelangelo and Van Gogh were more hard-working achievers than born geniuses sparked the idea that individuals could become artists through education, thereby offering opportunities to those who otherwise had none.
Through his teacher Timothy Jahn, Tim met Anthony Waichulis, and in 2010, The Waichulis Studio in Bear Creek Village Pennsylvania became the flagship of the newly-established ÀNI Art Academies project, aptly named after the Swahili word andjani, meaning the ‘journey ahead’.
Today, the ÀNI Art Academies family has expanded to include ÀNI Art Academies Americas in Red Bank, New Jersey, which is exclusively for veterans and those with disabilities, and four academies uniquely paired with ÀNI Private Resorts. These are located on Thailand’s Koh Yao Noi Island, near Dickwella on Sri Lanka’s south coast, on a private peninsula on the Dominican Republic’s north coast, and on the northern cliffs of Anguilla Island.
