Campus Partners
@ UChicago Arts
Professional Organizations
Court Theatre is the professional theatre of the University of Chicago, dedicated to innovation, inquiry, intellectual engagement, and community service. Functioning as the University’s Center for Classic Theatre, Court and its artists mount theatrical productions and audience enrichment programs in collaboration with faculty. These collaborations enable a re-examination of classic texts that pose the enduring and provocative questions that define the human experience.
The goal of the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures is to be the world’s leading center for the study of the ancient civilizations of West Asia and North Africa by combining innovation in theory, methodology, and significant empirical discovery with the highest standards of rigorous scholarship.
Rockefeller Chapel is the ceremonial and spiritual center of the University of Chicago and provides opportunities for over 100 student musicians per year: choristers singing in weekly services and concerts, carillonneurs playing the bells and leading tower tours, and organ scholars learning on two of the finest instruments in Chicagoland. Presenting partnerships with UChicago Presents and Empty Bottle Presents bring in major international talent for students in the unique acoustics.
The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago presents contemporary art exhibitions, events, and publications. “The Ren”—as we are known by many—is an independent, non-collecting museum driven by an uncompromising commitment to artists and their ideas. All exhibitions and events are free and open to the public.
UChicago Presents brings today's most sought-after artists for riveting performances in intimate venues on Chicago's South Side. Since 1943, UCP has been Chicago's premiere presenter of chamber music with a performance offering that has grown to include jazz, contemporary, and world music as well.
The Smart Museum of Art is a site for rigorous inquiry and exchange that encourages the examination of complex issues through the lens of art objects and artistic practice. Through strong community and scholarly partnerships, the Museum incorporates diverse ideas, identities, and experiences into its exhibitions and collections, academic initiatives, and public programming.
Centers & Initiatives
Arts + Public Life
Arts + Public Life (APL), an initiative of UChicago Arts, provides platforms for artists and access to arts programming through artist residencies, arts education, creative entrepreneurship, and artist-led programs and exhibitions. APL leads UChicago Arts’ Arts Block in Washington Park, and hosts a series of gallery exhibitions and special events.
Arts, Science + Culture Initiative
The Arts, Science + Culture Initiative cultivates collaboration, active exchange, and sustained dialogue among those engaged in artistic and scientific inquiry within the University and beyond. The Initiative provides opportunities for scholars, students, and arts practitioners, in multiple domains, to pursue original investigations and explore new modes of artistic production and scientific inquiry.
Logan Center for the Arts
Designed as a home for the creative life of the University of Chicago campus and the city of Chicago, the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts is a partner, resource, and catalyst for developing deeper cultural networks and richer creative projects citywide and beyond. The Logan Center presents concerts, exhibitions, performances, programs, and more from world-class, emerging, local, and student artists. The building is also home to Café Logan, Logan Center Exhibitions, and the Logan Media Center.
Gray Center for Arts & Inquiry
The Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts & Inquiry is a forum at the University of Chicago for experimental collaborations between artists and scholars. Through its various programs—including the Mellon Residential Fellowships for Arts Practice and Scholarship, incubator initiatives, lab events, collaborative experiments, salons, international conferences, and institutional collaborations—the Gray Center seeks to foster a culture of innovation and experimentation at the intersection of arts practice and scholarship.
Center for Contemporary Composition
The Chicago Center for Contemporary Composition is a dynamic, collaborative, and interdisciplinary environment for the creation, performance and study of new music and for the advancement of the careers of emerging and established composers, performers, and scholars. The CCCC is comprised of ten integrated entities: an annual concert series with the resident Grossman Ensemble, CHIME, visiting ensembles, distinguished guest composers, performances, recordings, research, graduate student-led projects, workshops, and postdoctoral research positions.
Open Practice Committee
The Open Practice Committee in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago explores the means, atmospheres, and attitudes that make art contemporary. By inviting artists, critics, and curators of contemporary art to address our community, the OPC fosters a genuinely experimental, yet conceptually rigorous environmental space in which strategies of production and description are challenged and renewed. From the conventional departmental presentation to the unconventional institutional event, the OPC aims to advance our collective understanding of theory and practice within the visual arts.
Media Arts, Data & Design Center (MADD Center)
The Media Arts, Data, and Design Center at the University of Chicago is a 20,000-square-foot collaborative space for inquiry and experimentation at this transdisciplinary crossroads. A partnership between UChicago Arts, the Physical Sciences Division, the UChicago Library, and the Division of the Humanities, the center supports work and research by faculty, students, staff, and community partners with cutting-edge technology. MADD houses two arts labs operated by the Logan Center: the Hack Arts Lab (HAL), an open-access digital fabrication, prototyping, and visualization facility, and the Weston Game Lab (WGL), built on the work of the Game Changer Chicago Design Lab and offering expanded and centralized resources for the study, play, and development of analog, electronic, virtual and online games.