Gray Co-Laboratory for Arts and Science

The Co-Laboratory for Arts and Science at the Gray Center is dedicated to elevating the University’s new arts and humanities joint platform to bring together artists, humanists, and scientists. The Gray Co-Lab’s public programs and fellowships for graduate students, scholars, and artists engage rigorous interdisciplinary pursuits that explore the experimental dimensions of scientific theory through art and humanities practice and encourage new models for realizing the experiential and sensuous dimensions of scientific concepts. With all its program elements, the Co-Lab emphasizes an open environment to nurture curiosity and wonder and to further the engagement of communities throughout Chicago.

History of the Program

In 2024, Dr. Desiree Foerster was appointed Director of the newly named Gray Co-Laboratory for Arts and Science, formerly the Arts, Science + Culture Initiative. In addition to Foerster’s appointment, the Gray Co-Laboratory for Arts and Science officially began its tenure as part of the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry. Read the press release here. The Arts, Science + Culture Initiative was founded in 2010 by Julie Marie Lemon to foster opportunities for scholars, graduate students, and arts practitioners to think together and to experiment in proximity to one another, within the University and the city of Chicago. Over the course of its first decade, ASCI established well-regarded graduate fellowships and a collaboration grant program as well as offered public programming, all of which focused on cultivating productive discourse and fruitful relationships across the arts and sciences. Its flagship program, the Graduate Collaboration Grants, has funded more than 60 collaborative projects since it began in 2010. Visit the Arts, Science + Culture Initiative website to learn more.

Co-Lab Seed Grant

The Gray Center Co-Lab Grant is a micro-grant to support collaborative work between artists and scientists at the University of Chicago. We offer support for realizing material objects, research travel, invited guests, and other efforts that contribute to the work of bringing the disciplines of art and science into working dialogue.
More information may be found here>>
Application may be found here>>

Co-Lab Events

Gray Co-Lab events bring together artists and scientists from the University of Chicago and the broader community to discuss aspects or lures in their work that normally receive lesser attention. We invite our guests and audiences to explore new perspectives on the relationship between aesthetics and science in a relaxed atmosphere and with snacks and drinks.

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Art and Science in Portable Gray

Camera Sense
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Sidney R. Nagel, and Jennifer Ding

Observation and Imagination in Deep Time: A Conversation with Paul Sereno
Julie Marie Lemon