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Gray Center Lab
BY SUSIE ALLEN
Since its founding in 2011, the Richard & Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry has provided a forum for collaborative experiments that bring together artists and scholars at the University of Chicago.
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Now, those collaborations have a new home. Earlier this fall, the Gray Center opened the Gray Center Lab, a 1,100 square-foot space located in Midway Studios that can be configured to serve as a classroom, studio, collaborative workspace or exhibition and performance space. It features professional sound and lighting systems in order to accommodate the diverse forms of work taking place at the Gray Center.
“We wanted to leave the space as open to redefinition as possible, without prescribing the forms of that possibility. I hope that when our fellows walk into the space, they can reimagine it in ways that line up with
their aspirations for their projects,” said David Levin, director of the Gray Center.
That strategy seems to be paying off. In response to the quality and variety of projects presented in the brief time since the Gray Center Lab opened its doors, Newcity recently named the Gray Center Lab Chicago’s best new venue for experimental arts, calling it a “a much-needed incubator of the local creative culture.”
The Gray Center’s inaugural exhibition in the Lab, Unfurling: Five Explorations in Art, Activism, and Archiving, featured new works from five artists with an interest in local and socially engaged research and practice in the arts. “Never the Same,” a collaborative project supported by the Gray Center, presented Unfurling. It’s one of the many innovative projects sponsored by the Gray Center through its signature initiative, the Mellon Residential Fellowships for Arts Practice and Scholarship.
The Gray Center seeks out challenging projects with the potential to have a lasting impact upon participants, according to Levin. “If we’re successful, what happens at the Gray Center today will differ from what happened yesterday or what will happen tomorrow.”
Visit the Gray Center Lab at Midway Studios For more information, visit graycenter.uchicago.edu
