The first Institute for Advanced Study was founded in Princeton, New Jersey in 1930. Several other institutes followed, both in America, Europe and, more recently, in Asia and Africa. This paper is not a history of such institutes, but is about the idea of an Institute for Advanced Study. Like John Henry Newman in his famous book, The Idea of a University, it offers some general reflections on education, science and art and their interrelationship. It underlines the importance of these institutes in an academic world increasingly dominated by notions of measured output and impact and of policies imposed from ‘above’.