A wide-ranging lineup of arts celebrations will accompany the ceremonial groundbreaking for the new Reva and David Logan Center for Creative and Performing Arts on May 12, highlighting the University of Chicago’s distinctive approaches to arts theory and practice.
The festivities planned for the day and evening include a Faculty Roundtable discussion on the arts at UChicago and three campus venues that will showcase current student and faculty works. These activities will lead up to the evening’s formal groundbreaking ceremony for the Logan Arts Center, which will be held at 6 p.m. May 12, at the center’s future site on the Midway Plaisance at 60th Street and Ingleside Avenue.
With a multimedia production, the groundbreaking ceremony will highlight the impact of the Logan Arts Center on arts activities and collaborations on campus and in the broader community. The event will include video, spoken word and a performance by members of the University Symphony Orchestra and Motet Choir.
“The extraordinary resources that the Logan Arts Center will make available to our students and faculty will support new forms of artistic practice, teaching and scholarship, and allow artists to continue to push the boundaries of creativity, while furthering our engagement with residents of the South Side and the City of Chicago,” says Larry Norman, Deputy Provost for the Arts.
But before President Robert J. Zimmer and Board Chairman Andrew Alper lead the commemoration of a new chapter in creative pursuits, University artists will perform around campus, and scholars will discuss a broad slice of the University’s arts scholarship. The celebration also is the centerpiece of 60 Days of UChicago Art, a set of arts programs this spring that have been coordinated with the Logan Arts Center groundbreaking.
David Levin, Associate Professor of Germanic Studies, Cinema and Media Studies, and Theater and Performance Studies, will moderate a Faculty Roundtable discussion on May 12 about the University’s tradition of exploring the arts through theory and practice. A conversation among Thomas Christensen, Professor in Music and the College, Jennifer Wild, Assistant Professor in Cinema and Media Studies and the College, and Laura Letinsky, Professor in Visual Arts and Cinema and Media Studies and the College, will highlight the work of Chicago faculty and the impact the Logan Arts Center will have on the interactions between scholarship and creative work and performance, exhibition, and public programming. The Faculty Roundtable will be held at 4:45 p.m. in the Reynolds Club’s third-floor Francis X. Kinahan Theater.
From 4:30 to 5:30 p.m., UChicago artists will share some of the imaginative products of their artistic pursuits at three campus locations.
Midway Studios will exhibit the works of visual artists, and screen documentary films made by students in Cinema and Media Studies. A display of historical images of Midway Studios will complement an unveiling of benches that were created from building materials salvaged from the recent Midway Studios renovation project.
On the north side of campus, the Smart Museum of Art will feature its current gallery exhibitions, including “The Darker Side of Light,” as well as Music Department artists who will perform chamber music, and students and faculty members who will read original works from their creative writing projects.
Members of University Theater, Theater and Performance Studies, Ransom Notes, Golosa, Soul Umoja, Off-Off Campus, the Dean’s Men, University Ballet, Men in Drag, Voices In Your Head, PhiNix Dance Crew, UC Dancers, and Fire Escape Films—all of whom add to the creativity of the annual student-run Festival of the Arts held each spring—will share theater, choral, dance and film performances, in the Reynolds Club.
“The performances surrounding the Logan Arts Center groundbreaking provide a wonderful opportunity for the University community, and members of our broader community, to experience the creativity and talent of our students and faculty,” says William Michel, Executive Director of the Reva and David Logan Center for Creative and Performing Arts.
“The ceremony itself will point to Chicago’s history, its present and its future as a vibrant place to express the diverse disciplines within the arts. We also want to formally thank the Logan family and all of the contributors who have made the art center possible,” says Michel. “We hope the entire University community will join us to celebrate their generosity and the future of the arts at Chicago.”
The University's Jazz X-tet will close the ceremony as guests are invited to a reception. Several evening performances will provide other options to experience UChicago arts, including the final dress rehearsal of Court Theater’s production of “Sizwe Bansi is Dead;” a Motet Choir concert in the Great Hall at Midway Studios; and an open rehearsal of the University Symphony Orchestra in Mandel Hall.
More information about the Reva and David Logan Center for Creative and Performing Arts and the groundbreaking ceremony may be obtained at: http://arts.uchicago.edu/logan/.
—Prof. Jacqueline Stewart