University of Chicago Trustee Kenneth C. Griffin has agreed to loan a wide selection of works from his acclaimed art collection to be on exhibit at the University’s David Rubenstein Forum when the building officially opens in the autumn of 2020.
Selections from Griffin’s collection will launch the “Art at the Rubenstein” program in which significant works of art will animate the building, while promoting and supporting scholarship and teaching focused on the exhibition. The art exhibition will be open to the public.
The David Rubenstein Forum, currently under construction on UChicago’s Hyde Park campus, is designed to promote inquiry, intellectual exchange, and community through spaces that support conferences, symposia, lectures, performances, celebrations, and other gatherings of faculty, students, alumni, and visitors from around the country and world. “Art at the Rubenstein” is intended to encourage visitors to engage and to question, serving as an inspiration for the intellectual inquiry that the Forum is designed to foster and advance.
“The David Rubenstein Forum will contribute to the University of Chicago’s character as an intellectual destination, providing a new space for the exchange of ideas, transformative education and scholarly collaboration. We are deeply grateful to Ken Griffin, whose art collection will support the goals of the Forum and enhance the experience for its many visitors,” President Robert J. Zimmer said.
Specific works for the exhibition will be chosen from Griffin’s collection over the coming year and will be displayed for two years, with some pieces rotating during that time. To advance the scholarly and educational goals of the exhibition, the University plans to produce a catalog with essays by scholars and curators, along with a training program for docents and other educators to discuss the collection with students and visitors. The University hopes to partner with other private art collectors to loan pieces for presentation, teaching and study for one- to two-year periods following the Griffin exhibition.
“The Rubenstein Forum reflects the University of Chicago’s longstanding tradition of intellectual discourse rooted in free expression. The group of works selected by the University for display mirrors the diversity of the ideas and debates we hope will take place in the space,” Griffin said.
Griffin is the founder and chief executive officer of Citadel, a leading investment firm that manages capital for investors around the world including sovereign wealth funds, retirement programs, endowments and foundations. Griffin, who joined the University’s Board of Trustees in 2014, is a generous supporter of the University, including a $125 million gift in 2017 to support economic scholarship and education.
The David Rubenstein Forum, which will be located on East 60th Street between Woodlawn Avenue and Kimbark Avenue, is designed by the New York-based firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro. It is named in honor of University Trustee David M. Rubenstein, JD’73, co-founder and co-CEO of the Carlyle Group, in recognition of his ongoing generosity to the University.
The collections at the Rubenstein Forum will complement the University’s eminent art collections and exhibition spaces at the Smart Museum of Art, Oriental Institute, Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, Booth School of Business, the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, the Arts Incubator, the Renaissance Society on the University’s Hyde Park campus, and the University’s libraries.
—Prof. Kunle Odunsi
