About the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry

In June 2011, the University announced the creation of the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, a new forum at the University of Chicago for innovative collaborations between artists and scholars.  Read more...

Although its activities occur in venues throughout the campus, encompassing various divisions, departments, and programs, the Gray Center does not yet have a fixed location on campus.  In its multiple wings — including its Mellon Residential Fellowship for Arts Practice and Scholarship program, incubator initiatives, lab events, salons, international conferences, and institutional collaborations — the Gray Center will work to cultivate a culture of innovation and experimentation, not just for the arts or for research, but for the relationship between them.  

An important conviction of the Gray Center is that art making constitutes a form of inquiry, a practice of interpretation.  As such, the collaboration of artists and scholars, rather than forming an exception to the practices of a research university, offers an innovative forum in which to expand, revise, and reflect upon those practices.