Driven by the creative experimentation and intellectual energy of our students, faculty, resident artists, and professional presenting organizations, the arts are central to the life of the University of Chicago.

The University of Chicago’s great tradition of integrated and interdisciplinary inquiry is particularly manifested in the arts, which take root throughout campus in a wide range of academic departments and co-curricular programs; in our theaters, museums and galleries, and performance halls; in our interdisciplinary research centers; and in our multitude of student-run arts groups. This spirit of borderless exchange has created a university-wide laboratory for scholars and artists (and scholar-artists) who boldly integrate teaching, research, and creative expression.

The arts at the University are also firmly rooted in the world and city around it. As a culturally rich and diverse metropolis, Chicago offers an inexhaustible array of opportunities for partnership, discovery, and engagement in the arts. The University of Chicago has a strong tradition of collaboration with the city’s preeminent cultural institutions, including the Art Institute, Goodman Theatre, Hyde Park Arts Center, DuSable Museum of African American History, Lyric Opera, and Chicago Symphony Orchestra. We are also engaged in the cultural life of our neighboring communities through a range of individual partnerships with schools and arts organizations, partnerships that are now being expanded through the University’s Arts + Public Life initiative.

Our vibrant arts scene is manifest in many forms and throughout the campus. Most visible among these is the interdisciplinary new 11-story, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien-designed, Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts. The Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry is a unique program fostering collaborations between artists and scholars on campus and internationally. Teams of graduate students from disparate arts and science disciplines are collaborating on creative projects through a special grant program. Lectures, exhibits, performances, and events sponsored by the Open Practice Committee explore the atmospheres and attitudes that make art contemporary. The field-defining scholarship of our faculty gives us a leading role extraordinary collaborative efforts throughout the campus, city, and around the globe.

Explore this website to sample many other manifestations of our singular approach to the arts, from academic departments and committees and our student-run organizations to our vital professional and presenting campus institutions. Our campus is also home to the Special Collections Research Center, and Rockefeller Memorial Chapel. Collectively they nurture a creative conversation among the arts and other disciplines that enriches and transforms the life of the campus, its neighboring communities, and the city of Chicago.

The first of these moments came in the first few decades after the University’s opening in 1892. In 1898, students initiated the tradition of presenting productions that continues today with University Theater. In 1903, the University inaugurated Mandel Hall with a concert by the ensemble that became the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In 1909, sculptor Lorado Taft moved into the complex known as Midway Studios, near the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, and in the 1920s he began sharing the space with art students. University faculty were instrumental in the founding of Poetry magazine in 1912 and, in 1915, of The Renaissance Society, which first presented the work of such major artists as Alexander Calder in the United States. 

The second great moment in the arts at Chicago occurred from World War II through the mid-1960s. An extraordinary number of the University’s most distinguished arts alumni were students during this period, including composer Philip Glass, director Mike Nichols, and writer Susan Sontag. In 1943, the University of Chicago Presents chamber music series was formed; one of its first performances was by 24-year-old violinist Isaac Stern. In 1955, Richard Stern joined the Department of English Language & Literature as its first faculty member in the area of creative writing, and he facilitated campus visits by Saul Bellow (who later taught at the University for three decades), Bernard Malamud, and others. In 1959, a student improv group called the Compass Players reconstituted itself as The Second City under the direction of cofounder and Chicago alumnus Bernie Sahlins. In 1964, faculty member and renowned composer Ralph Shapey formed the Contemporary Chamber Players, which continues today under the artistic direction of Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Shulamit Ran and a new name, Contempo. 

Our arts faculty members and lecturers represent the best that contemporary practices have to offer. In addition, we have a flourishing artist-in-residence program and more than two dozen scholars in such related areas as performance studies, contemporary art criticism, and film history. The University has offered a doctorate in music composition since 1933 and in cinema & media studies since 2000, a master of fine arts in visual arts (early 1970s), and a master of arts in the humanities with a creative writing track (2000). It has well-established bachelor’s degree programs in visual arts, music, and art history, and, more recently, cinema & media studies (1996) and theater & performance studies (2002). The College’s general education core includes a “dramatic, music, and visual arts” requirement, inviting students to study the history of the arts, stage desire, or begin working with sculpture. Several thousand major and non-major undergraduates enroll annually in creative and performing arts classes.

Alongside these programs, co-curricular student activities flourish. The number of student organizations dedicated to the arts has grown rapidly in recent years. Almost half of the College’s undergraduates and a large percentage of graduate students participate in over 60 student organizations, exploring music, visual arts, theater, filmmaking, dance, and other forms of performance.

To read more about the unique history of the Performing Arts at the University of Chicago, please visit the Regenstein Library Centennial Catalogues.