Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society

Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society The Neubauer Collegium explores new possibilities for humanistic research.

The Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society creates new global communities of inquiry. Through faculty research projects, a global fellows initiative, and exhibitions, the Neubauer Collegium explores novel approaches to complex human questions at the University of Chicago and beyond.

06/01/2026

“I was always suspicious of power and authority and how everything is framed and constructed in a very particular way to focus our attention on a specific subject.”

—Nyeema Morgan on the works she made for “Story Structure, Pt. 2,” on view in our gallery through June 28.

Gallery hours: M-F, 9-4

Video by .mov

"Let's Get It On: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar," an exhibition exploring the central role of costume design in Saar's ...
05/29/2026

"Let's Get It On: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar," an exhibition exploring the central role of costume design in Saar's early career, opens tonight at Roberts Projects in Los Angeles. The show includes more than 200 objects, including a treasure trove of playbills, drawings, sketches, and photographs documenting her time at the Inner City Cultural Center in the 1970s – as well as leatherwork, jewelry, and ephemera from her personal archive. Together they capture a crucial moment in Saar's career, when she began to pivot from fashion design toward the pioneering work in assemblage and installation that made her an iconic figure in the art world.

We were deeply honored to present the first iteration of "Let's Get It On" in 2025 as part of a series of exhibitions and events linked to our multi-year Panafrica research project, which explored the interwoven strands of Pan-African politics and culture. (The Collegium exhibition featured many works from Saar's archive that had never been shown before; the show at Roberts Projects includes a selection of these plus many more.) Programming for our exhibition included a public reception to celebrate Saar as part of Panafrica Days, a four-day, citywide constellation of activities organized in conjunction with the "Project a Black Planet" exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago.

The celebrations continue this summer with a series of events marking the occasion of Saar's 100th birthday. "Let's Get It On" runs at Roberts Projects through August 22, and a catalogue about the exhibition – featuring a preface by Neubauer Collegium Executive Director Elspeth Carruthers and an essay by our curator, Dieter Roelstraete – is forthcoming.

Learn more: https://www.robertsprojectsla.com/exhibitions/lets-get-it-on-the-wearable-art-of-betye-saar

IMAGES: Betye Saar at the Neubauer Collegium, March 7, 2025. Photos by Abel Arciniega. Details from "Let's Get It On: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar," Neubauer Collegium, Jan. 30 – April 26, 2025. Installation photography by Robert Chase Heishman for BOB.

05/26/2026

“Painting materials are even sufficient for sculpture. All you have to do is fold the painting in half.”

—Mike Cloud, in dialogue with Nyeema Morgan about the works he made for “Story Structure, Pt. 2,” on view in our gallery through June 28.

Gallery hours: M-F, 9-4

Video by .mov

05/21/2026

A mehfil (Arabic: محفل) is an intimate, private, or semi-private gathering in South Asian culture, often held in a living room or salon setting, dedicated to music, poetry, or dance. It emphasizes closeness between performers and audience, and a sense of shared artistic experience.

On May 22 starting at 4:30pm, the Neubauer Collegium's Sonic Borderlands of South Asia research project will present an "Afternoon Mehfil" at Fulton Recital Hall (Goodspeed Hall, 5845 S Ellis Ave). The event will feature a performance by the Modal Collective, a group of University of Chicago musicians and guest artists working at the intersection of performance, improvisation, and intercultural music-making. Members include: Ronnie Malley, Pramantha Tagore, Lara Balikci, Hannah Goldberg, Nathan Friedman, and Lauren Molloy. The concert will also include a series of short performances by musicians from across the University and the wider Chicagoland music community.

Presented by the Sonic Borderlands of South Asia research project at the Neubauer Collegium in partnership with the Department of Music at the University of Chicago and Intercultural Music Production.

Small Press Poetry and the Archive: A Symposium on Editorial PracticeMAY 27, 3:00 – 7:30 pmFranke Institute for the Huma...
05/20/2026

Small Press Poetry and the Archive: A Symposium on Editorial Practice
MAY 27, 3:00 – 7:30 pm
Franke Institute for the Humanities

A contemporary wave of independent small presses has promoted innovative archival publishing alongside new experimental poetry. At this event, Neubauer Collegium Visiting Fellow Kai Ihns and UChicago English and Creative Writing Professor Srikanth Reddy will convene a group of editors from some notable publishers—and from UChicago's own graduate-student-run journal, Chicago Review—to present exciting new archival projects and share their editorial philosophy around these dual publishing lines. The symposium will conclude with a poetry reading and a moderated discussion about how these poets' literary practice informs and is informed by their editorial work and perspectives.

Co-Sponsored by the Franke Institute for the Humanities, the Neubauer Collegium, the English Department, and the Program in Creative Writing at the University of Chicago.

IMAGE: City Lights Bookstore via Flickr.

05/19/2026

“Some might say that visually the works seem dissimilar. I would disagree. I think that the aesthetics of our works are very similar. They have a similar feeling.”

—Mike Cloud reflecting on the works he and Nyeema Morgan are presenting in “Story Structure, Pt. 2,” on view in our gallery through June 28.

Gallery hours: M-F, 9-4

Video by Robert Salazar for BOB.

At the Movement Theory Lab's final event of the season this past Monday, Chicago-based artist and performer Courtney Mac...
05/16/2026

At the Movement Theory Lab's final event of the season this past Monday, Chicago-based artist and performer Courtney Mackedanz presented a riveting, richly complex work in progress titled "Dead End Host." Shaped by their experience of contracting the tick-borne illness Lyme disease, the piece incorporates choreography, an immersive soundtrack, mixed-media stage props, and lighting to trace how the body emerges from and within ecological conditions.

The Movement Theory Lab is a forum for faculty and graduate students interested in dance and movement studies, part of the Arts Labs initiative at the Neubauer Collegium. Please visit our website to learn more.

Photos by Abel Arciniega.

We were excited to see a sharp review of our exhibition "Mike Cloud & Nyeema Morgan: Story Structure, Pt. 2" in the Chic...
05/15/2026

We were excited to see a sharp review of our exhibition "Mike Cloud & Nyeema Morgan: Story Structure, Pt. 2" in the Chicago Reader.

"In a media landscape increasingly dominated by alarmist or reactionary information," writes critic Isaac Vazquez, "the imagery of the world can feel overstimulating yet depleted of resonance. Cloud and Morgan respond to this condition through artistic processes that negotiate the value of images and information, offering a reconsideration of attention and care."

Read the review: https://chicagoreader.com/visual-arts/art-review/mike-cloud-nyeema-morgan-neubauer-collegium/

The exhibition runs through June 28. Gallery hours: M-F, 9-4.

Installation photography by Robert Heishman for Bob.

We associate the “oral” today with the vital, the raw, and the multivocal. On May 18, the writer and musician Amit Chaud...
05/15/2026

We associate the “oral” today with the vital, the raw, and the multivocal. On May 18, the writer and musician Amit Chaudhuri will look instead at how, in India, orality has often been the domain within which sophisticated philosophical lineages have been disseminated.

This lecture, the third in a series sponsored by the Sonic Borderlands of South Asia research project at the Neubauer Collegium, is presented in partnership with the International Balzan Prize, the Committee on Southern Asian Studies, and the Department of Music at the University of Chicago. Chaudhuri is currently in residence as a Neubauer Collegium Visiting Fellow to collaborate on the project.

Learn more and register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/amit-chaudhuri-the-high-philosophies-of-orality-tickets-1988036088457?aff=oddtdtcreator

Photos by Abel Arciniega of Amit Chaudhuri and UChicago Jazz Ensemble Director Michael Allemana at a performance lecture on “Music as a Non-Universal Language,” Neubauer Collegium, May 11, 2026.

If you're in Chicago, New York, or Los Angeles this month, you're in Mike Cloud territory.The Museum of Contemporary Art...
05/14/2026

If you're in Chicago, New York, or Los Angeles this month, you're in Mike Cloud territory.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago recently opened "Mike Cloud: Worldless Obstruction" as part of its "Chicago Works" series, which features artists who are shaping contemporary art in the city. The exhibition includes seven new paintings that incorporate thick layers of color, “X” and arrow shapes, and motifs that call to mind historical barricades. Cloud playfully juxtaposes these elements and uses hinges and stretcher bars to present the paintings as sculptural installations.

Cloud's works at the MCA are in dialogue with those currently on view in our gallery. "Mike Cloud & Nyeema Morgan: Story Structure, Pt. 2" features a mixed-media installation by Morgan alongside three of Cloud’s multi-dimensional paintings, each of which incorporate a sun motif, thick stripes of finger-painting, and New York Times search engine results to interrogate the way we interpret childhood memories and media narratives.

At the ESTHER III art fair in New York this week, Thomas Erben Gallery extends Cloud's investigation of childhood memory with a series of paintings that incorporate mazes and plastic toys. The Hammer Museum in LA is concurrently showing "Painted Clothing (2007–8)," a series of collages Cloud fashioned from children’s clothing, alongside a set of newly commissioned portraits.

"Mike Cloud & Nyeema Morgan: Story Structure, Pt. 2" runs in our gallery through June 28. Gallery hours: M–F, 9–4.

IMAGE: Mike Cloud, "Poison Arrows South Africa," 2026. Courtesy of the artist and Thomas Erben Gallery, New York. Photo: Colleen Keihm.

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