News

Newcity: Gray Center Lab - Best new venue for experimental arts

Oct 31, 2013

The Gray Center Lab makes Newcity's annual "Best of Chicago" in its first year! The former studio of powerhouse Chicago sculptor Lorado Taft has been converted into the Gray Center Lab on the campus of the University of Chicago. The venue is a think tank for artists and scholars to produce small exhibitions or performances. It is like a studio for collaborations. So far, many of the programs have focused on Chicago-specific topics, making the Gray Center Lab a much-needed incubator of the local creative culture.

Unfurling the Past / South Side Weekly

Oct 16, 2013

Baraka de Soleil scoops the soaking wet fragments of a Paul Laurence Dunbar poem out of the bucket in front of him and solemnly offers them to each of the audience members crouching beside him in the dark. “Listen!” he says conspiratorially as he swirls the water in the bucket. “Listen!” ...

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The Gray Center Lab is open!

Oct 01, 2013

On September 24, 2013 the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry opened the Gray Center Lab, a 1100+ square foot seminar space, research facility, exhibition/performance space, and production studio at the University of Chicago’s Midway Studios. 

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`Crisis Image Archive` exhibition featuring Gray Center Fellow Daniel Tucker

Jul 11, 2013

Gray Center Mellon Fellow Daniel Tucker is featured in the exhibition "Crisis Image Archive" on view at Art In These Times. For more on the exhibition click here. For a review on the show in Newcity by Bert Stabler click here. For more on Daniel's collaborative fellowship project Never the Same with Rebecca Zorach, click here.

`AFRICOBRA: Philosophy` exhibition curated by Gray Center Fellow Rebecca Zorach

Jul 11, 2013

"AFRICOBRA: Philosophy", an exhibition curated by current Gray Center Mellon Fellow Rebecca Zorach, is now on view at the Logan Center.  For more on the exhibition click here.  For more on her collaborative fellowship, "Never the Same", with Daniel Tucker click here.

Mellon Fellow Patrick Jagoda launches new project

Jul 05, 2013

The Game Changer Chicago Design Lab, co-founded by 2012-2013 Gray Center Mellon Fellow Patrick Jagoda, is launching its latest project, "The Source", on July 8th.  Click here for more information.

UChicago News: Never the Same June 7th Symposium on Grassroots Archiving

Jun 05, 2013

Read article here.

Down the Rabbit Hole / Alternate Reality: A Transmedia Gaming Project

Jun 04, 2013

Grey City chases The Maroon Rabbit, part of the transmedia game "The Project", through magical portals, chilling initiations, and a cathartic finale this spring quarter. View article here.

UChicago Workshop on Jamming, UChicago News

Oct 24, 2012

“Form follows function” is a catchphrase of architects and designers, but a workshop at the University of Chicago will evaluate whether new fabrication techniques and constructions of randomly aggregated particles may already be chipping away at the foundations of that stalwart concept. 

Download article here: UChicago workshop on Oct. 26-28 will be jammed with ideas

Where Theory and Practice Make Perfect, Wall Street Journal

Sep 11, 2012

Another piece of the university's arts initiative is the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, launched last year with the Grays' $5 million contribution and an additional $1.4 million from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to sponsor Mellon fellows.  Read article.

The New Yorker gives a portrait of Alison Bechdel

Apr 23, 2012

Judith Thurman from the New Yorker writes a feature on Alison Bechdel, cartoonist, and current Gray Center fellow. Together with Hillary Chute, an English professor at the University and comic book theorist, Bechdel is experimenting with Lines of Transmission: Comics and Autobiography, a Mellon Fellowship which seeks to uncover new terms with which to engage nonfiction comics. 

The whole article can be found here.



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