The Reva and David Logan Center for Creative and Performing Arts

• The Arts at the University of Chicago
  • A Model of Convergence
  • Student Arts Programs
  • History of the Arts on Campus
  • "The Future of the Arts" Report
  • Notable Chicago Arts Alumni
• The Project
  • Project Objectives
  • The Site
  • Project Team
  • Project Planning Timeline
• The Architect
  • The Selection Process
  • The Winning Firm
  • Statement from the Architects
  • Previous Projects
• Supporting the David Logan Arts Center
• News and Archives
  • Project Videos
• Back to home

Student Arts Programs

Artmaking at the University occurs at all levels, and necessity has over the years generated an exciting culture of invention. The University has consistently attracted students who have developed high-quality artwork while on campus and frequently gone on to notable artistic careers. The latter category includes writer Kurt Vonnegut (AM '71); composer Philip Glass (AB '56); and composer/librettists Mark Hollmann (AB '85) and Greg Kotis (AB '88), whose musical Urinetown is currently on Broadway. Improvisational comedy was born at the University in the 1950s and continues today with Off-Off Campus. A student fine arts club called Outside the Lines finds underutilized spaces around campus in which to hold informal drawing sessions. The undergraduate filmmaking group is called Fire Escape Films, to commemorate a past in which students had to enter a locked building through a fire escape in order to get access their equipment. The David Logan Arts Center will be planned with this culture of invention in mind.

All undergraduates in the College are required to take at least one course in the arts as part of their general education requirements, and the departments of Theater & Performance Studies, Music, and Visual Arts offer a dozen of these "core" courses for students to choose from, along with a panoply of courses for students pursuing more advanced work in these areas. In addition, nearly sixty graduate students in the Humanities Division are pursuing graduate degrees in the arts, including not just M.F.A. students in the Department of Visual Arts but also students pursuing doctorates in music composition and the creative writing track in the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities. More than 1,600 undergraduates enroll annually in creative and performing arts classes that combine theory and practice. The number of student organizations dedicated to the arts is large. Almost half of the College's 4,500 students participate in over 75 student organizations, including 700 students in musical groups, 500 in visual arts; 500 in Theatre; 80 in filmmaking; and 100 in dance and other forms of performance. For more information, including a list of student arts organizations on campus, visit arts.uchicago.edu.