University Resources for Artistic Research

Organizations across the University of Chicago offer a variety of resources designed to support creative endeavors, arts practice and research, exhibition and performance, and professional development across the campus. A variety of grants, fellowships, funds, and prizes are available and can be viewed on this page.
 

The Arts, Science + Culture Initiative provides opportunities for scholars, students, and arts practitioners, in multiple domains, to pursue original investigations and explore new modes of artistic production and scientific inquiry. MFA students in DoVA have the opportunity to apply for funding for their artistic research through both Graduate Collaboration Grants and the Graduate Fellows Program.

ASCI is also responsible for Field Trip / Field Notes / Field Guide, a trans-disciplinary consortium of Fellows from The University of Chicago (UChicago), The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), and Northwestern University. The program is intended to build an interdisciplinary community that engages Chicago's vibrant urban environment, providing a unique platform for exchange and connect across disciplinary and institutional boundaries.

the cclouds (formerly Plexiglas) is a graduate student-organized reading and artist talk series. We seek to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration and sharing of work—presenters construct conversations-through-objects. The series is supported by the University of Chicago's English Department, the Humanities Division, and the Gray Center.
 

The Richard and Mary L Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry is a forum at the University of Chicago for experimental collaborations between artists and scholars. Located in the Midway studios building, the Gray Center is used as a classroom, studio, collaborative workspace or exhibition and performance space. DoVA students often participate in co-taught classes through the Gray Center's Mellon Collaborative Fellowship Program and attend evening events in their SIDEBAR programming series.
 

The Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago is a site for rigorous inquiry and exchange that encourages the examination of complex issues through the lens of art objects and artistic practice. Through strong community and scholarly partnerships, the Museum incorporates diverse ideas, identities, and experiences into its exhibitions and collections, academic initiatives, and public programming. The Smart Museum also provides employment opportunity to DoVA students through work study.

Through faculty research projects, a global fellows initiative, and exhibitions, the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society explores novel approaches to complex human questions at the University of Chicago and beyond. In its first five years, the Neubauer Collegium has supported 80 collaborative research projects, with 53 Visiting Fellows from 17 countries, and over 350 short-term visiting collaborators. Since opening the gallery in 2015, the Neubauer Collegium has hosted 13 exhibitions, each entirely distinct in configuration, media, and materials.

The Franke Institute for the Humanities is both an idea and a place. Conceptually, it represents the highest research and teaching ambitions of the University of Chicago, sponsoring creative and innovative work in established academic disciplines in the arts and humanities and encouraging new projects that cross traditional disciplinary and departmental lines. Materially, its physical space--a suite of offices and public rooms in the Regenstein Library--provides facilities where scholars and artists can do their work, and where that work can be tested and disseminated through discussions, debates, symposia, and public conferences.
 

Providing an unquestioned resource to the University of Chicago and wider city community, Doc Films screens movies every night of the academic year, dedicating one night a week to a particular theme, often featuring movies that could not be seen elsewhere. Besides regular screenings, Doc hosts a variety of special events, such as conversations with directors, faculty members, critics or other experts as well as sneak previews and student films produced by Fire Escape Films. Doc is exclusively run by volunteers who manage every aspect from programming film series to projecting films. They also annually elect the Doc Executive Board.

Doc Films is on record with the Museum of Modern Art as the longest continuously running student film society in the nation, looking back on a more than 75 year old history.
 

The mission of the Special Collections Research Center, the principal repository for and steward of the Library's rare books, manuscripts, University Archives, and the Chicago Jazz Archives, is to provide primary sources to stimulate, enrich, and support research, teaching, learning, and administration at the University of Chicago. Special Collections makes these resources available to a broad constituency as part of the University's engagement with the larger community of scholars and independent researchers.