About Us
A forum for experimental collaboration between artists and scholars
The Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry is dedicated to removing barriers that separate intellectual and artistic exploration. Through support, programming, publications, and other outlets, we provide a space for reimagining the relationship between these two modes of creativity, investigation, and expression.
Events
From our ongoing programs to special happenings, the Gray Center offers a panoply of virtual and in-person discussions, performances, screenings, get-togethers, and more throughout the year.
EXPLORE EVENTS >
NEWS
Now Available | Portable Gray 15 – Sounding the Spectral
The Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry at the University of Chicago is pleased to announce the release of issue 15 (Fall 2025) of Portable Gray: Sounding the Spectral. Co-edited by Seth Brodsky and Martha Feldman, this issue of the journal rethinks the spectral in colonial, global, and planetary terms, taking stock of new spatial and temporal displacements and new forms of repression, secrecy, surveillance, and disavowal. Sound and music emerge as exceptionally amenable to this task: they sympathize with the spectral at its most manifold and elusive; and they reverberate with the spectral’s radical scalability and indifference to distance and barrier. Music, sound, spectrality: all strange mediums for the otherwise unbridgeable, for mapping otherwise inaccessible terrain.
Featuring contributions by: Carolyn Abbate, Jessica Swanston Baker, Seth Brodsky, Kameryn Alexa Carter, Chris Batterman Cháirez, Amy Cimini, J. Martin Daughtry, Martha Feldman, Bonnie Gordon, Eli Greene, Jairo Moreno, Fumi Okiji, Jess Peritz, Abigail Taubman, and Gary Tomlinson.
The issue also features our latest reviews in PGR by Stephanie Cristello, Thomas Love, Matthew Metzger, Nicky Ni, Pia Singh, and Ellen Wiese.
LEARN MORE about the current issue>
Fellowships
Designed to foster intensive and experimental collaborations between artists and scholars, fellowships at the Gray Center are open to individuals at any stage of professional development in their fields, from emerging leaders to recognized figures.
EXPLORE FELLOWSHIPS >
Portable Gray
An interdisciplinary journal dedicated to the weirdness found at the intersection of the arts and scholarship, Portable Gray features essays, interviews, poetry, musical compositions, and non-traditional academic research.
EXPLORE PORTABLE GRAY >
Programs
Sidebar
The Gray Center welcomes the public for an ongoing conversation series with invited artists and scholars featuring food, drink, and meaningful engagement in a workshop setting.
Gray Sound
Artists and the community engage in performance and discussion to explore the boundaries of sound.