Presentations

A Curator-Led Tour with Ian White - See the work of visual artist Charles White through the eyes of his son.

Join Ian White, artist and son of Charles White, for a special look at Charles White Across Media: A Visual Archive. White will offer a personal perspective on how his father’s work appeared across media. Don’t miss this tour, told through the eyes of White’s son and living steward of his legacy.

This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required.

Speaker(s): Ian White

Join Dieter Roelstraete, curator of the Neubauer Collegium Exhibitions Gallery, for a special tour of Love Bless America. This exhibition features new works by the French artist and filmmaker Pierre Bismuth, who is known for, among other things, co-authoring the Academy Award-winning screenplay for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004).

Roelstraete will introduce Bismuth’s new film and digital works, which bring together contemporary art, gospel traditions, and Chicago’s improvisational music scene. At the center of the exhibition is a collaboration between musicians Joshua Abrams and Sharon Udoh, who were invited to compose a 21st-century spiritual from a lyrical prompt by Bismuth. Don’t miss this behind-the-scenes look at how art, music, and ideas of love and the divine come together in a contemporary meditation on America.

This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. This event is presented in partnership with the Neubauer Collegium.

Speaker(s): Dieter Roelstraete

The Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist on his legendary career

Join us for a conversation with Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist David Hume Kennerly, whose lens has captured six decades of defining moments in world history. From the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy to the burning Pentagon on 9/11, from the Ford White House to election nights with presidents and candidates across half a century, Kennerly has stood where few have ever been allowed to stand — and brought the rest of us with him. He'll take us behind his images to what it felt like to be present as history unfolded. 

This event celebrates the publication of his magnum opus, In the Room: 60 Years on the Front Lines of History, released as the nation marks its 250th birthday.

Speaker(s): David Hume Kennerly

The New Yorker critic on where we stand

Join us for a conversation with the leading intellectual and cultural critic, Hilton Als. Known for his insightful cultural commentary, particularly in his long-standing role as a writer at The New Yorker, Hilton Als is a celebrated curator and critic whose nuanced perspectives contextualize art within real-world issues, focusing on race, gender, sexuality, and identity in art, theater, and literature.

Speaker(s): Hilton Als and Rachel Cohen

How ecological thinking reshapes cities

Landscape architect Heidi Natura just finished working on the newly opened Obama Presidential Center. She’s also contributed to projects that have transformed Chicago’s waterways, including our beloved Lakefront. Natura joins us for a conversation on designing landscapes that bring people together, helping us to answer the question: How do we create public spaces that both restore ecosystems and strengthen civic life?

Speaker(s): Heidi Natura and Ann Lui

Three thousand years ago, a king inscribed his victories in stone—scholars are only now understanding his power. Hartapu ruled in the eighth century BCE in what is now central Türkiye. He was a little-known ruler until in 2019, when inscribed stone pulled from an introduced the world to a king who claimed to have conquered Phrygia. Curated by ISAC and MES Associate Professor of Anatolian Archaeology, James Osborne, this exhibition tells his story through ancient inscriptions, archaeological finds, and new technologies, including 3D printing and advanced imaging.

Join us at UChicago’s Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures for a special tour of the exhibition led by Anna Berlekamp, PhD candidate in Near Eastern Archaeology and ISAC Museum Educator Lead. 

Tickets are required but free; space is limited.

Speaker(s): Anna Berlekamp

A special “close reading” of a famous Chicago artist and artwork.

Join Hannah Wirta Kinney and Cooper Long from the Feitler Center for Academic Inquiry for Thinking with Artworks, a facilitated conversation centered on Nick Cave’s Sound Suit (2011), featured in the exhibition How Do We Heal?

Starting with participants’ observations and feelings, this interactive program invites the group to think expansively with an artwork and the questions it raises. No specialized knowledge is needed! Just curiosity and willingness to reflect and think with others.

Meet in the Smart Museum lobby. 

Learn more about How Do We Heal?

Speaker(s): Hannah Wirta Kinney and Cooper Long

Micro-tour of the Smart Museum’s headline fall exhibition.

Join curator Allison Martino for a brief introduction to teamLab: Everything Exists in Infinite Continuity, the first Midwest exhibition of the Tokyo-based art collective teamLab. Known for immersive digital installations that explore perception, consciousness, and the relationship between self and world, teamLab draws on approaches to perspective found in historical East Asian art.

Each 15-minute micro-tour offers an introduction to the exhibition and a closer look at two key artworks before you explore the immersive galleries at your own pace.

Meet in the Smart Museum lobby.

Learn more about the exhibition: teamLab: Everything Exists in Infinite Continuity

Speaker(s): Allison Martino

Sold Out

See what Chicago is made of

Named one of Chicago’s best tours by Curbed and Chicago Reader, this Brick of Chicago walking tour will take you through beautiful Hyde Park through the lens of the humble brick. You’ll look deep into the details that make up some of the neighborhood’s most remarkable buildings: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House, Barry Byrne’s St. Thomas the Apostle, and Edward Dart’s Augustana Lutheran Church.  Afterward, you’ll never look at Chicago the same way again.

Speaker(s): Will Quam

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A portal into Chicago’s rich history

Get a glimpse into the history of Chicago’s finest and most photographed neighborhoods, districts, and buildings through the Doorways of Chicago Walking Tour, led by creator and architecture nerd Ronnie Frey. You’ll discover the Chicago hidden gems that bring you back in time.

Speaker(s): Ronnie Frey

Sold Out

Eric Slauter on how generations have reinterpreted the Declaration of Independence. 

The story of the making of the Declaration of Independence often centers on its revolutionary authors, prominent politicians such as John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and (above all) Thomas Jefferson. But the Declaration we know today is equally a product of generations of readers, individuals and groups who discovered different meanings among its self-evident truths.

Join Eric Slauter for a guided tour of a special exhibition commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Featuring rare books, manuscripts, and historical documents from the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, the exhibition invites visitors to experience the responses to the Declaration in the age of the American Revolution, consider unfolding understandings over time, and explore conflicting interpretations individuals and groups have proposed at significant moments in history.

Highlighting compelling and unique materials from the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, and attending to the special role debates in Illinois have played in shaping the meaning of the Declaration, the exhibition will provide visitors with fresh perspectives on one of the most important documents in the history of modern politics. As the nation reflects on a significant milestone, the exhibit offers a forum for reflecting on the multiple legacies of the founding document of the United States.

Free and open to the public, but registration is required. This event is presented in partnership with the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center.

Speaker(s): Eric Slauter

Allyson Nadia Field on recovering a forgotten history of Black love on film.

In 1898, vaudeville performers Saint Suttle and Gertie Brown shared a kiss on camera in Something Good—Negro Kiss, the earliest known film to portray African American affection. Lost for more than a century before its remarkable rediscovery, the film offers a powerful counterpoint to the racist stereotypes that shaped early American cinema.

Drawing on her new book, Acts of Love: Black Performance and the Kiss That Changed Film History, Cinema & Media Studies Professor Allyson Nadia Field traces the lives of the performers, the film's extraordinary afterlife, and the overlooked history of Black performance that it reveals. In conversation, Field explores how a single surviving reel reshapes our understanding of early cinema, Black representation, and the enduring power of the moving image.

This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required.

Speaker(s): Allyson Nadia Field

Micro-tour of the Smart Museum’s headline fall exhibition.

Join curator Allison Martino for a brief introduction to teamLab: Everything Exists in Infinite Continuity, the first Midwest exhibition of the Tokyo-based art collective teamLab. Known for immersive digital installations that explore perception, consciousness, and the relationship between self and world, teamLab draws on approaches to perspective found in historical East Asian art. 

Each 15-minute micro-tour offers an introduction to the exhibition and a closer look at two key artworks before you explore the immersive galleries at your own pace.

Meet in the Smart Museum lobby.

Learn more about the exhibition: teamLab: Everything Exists in Infinite Continuity

Speaker(s): Allison Martino

Craig Taborn and Ian White on the creative legacies of the Black Arts Movement.

Join us at the Logan Center for the Arts for a unique exploration of the relationship between visual art and music, as two luminous artists discuss the making and re-making of artistic inheritance, influence, and creative reasoning.

This special program is presented in collaboration with Logan Center Exhibitions, UChicago Department of Music, and UChicago Presents.

Pianist and composer Craig Taborn joins Ian White, son of artist Charles White, for a considered exploration of the ways Black artistic legacies are made and remade across mediums. Taborn, a 2025 MacArthur Fellow whose trio is the 2026-27 Don Michael Randel Ensemble-in-Residence at the UChicago, will use excerpts from his compositions to discuss the ideas and theories of his creative process. He’ll draw connections between his work and Charles White Across Media: A Visual Archive, on view in Logan Center Exhibitions this fall. Taborn and Ian White will place Charles White’s art within a broader fabric of Black artistic and intellectual history, exploring how artists metabolize histories of struggle, creativity, and collective memory into individual expression. The conversation will be moderated by Michael Allemana, Director of the Jazz Ensemble at UChicago.

Experience a unique encounter between visual art and music, as two artists articulate the creative reasoning behind their work and reflect on creative inheritance.

Free and open to the public, but registration is required.

Speaker(s): Craig Taborn, Ian White, and Michael Allemana

Three thousand years ago, a king inscribed his victories in stone—scholars are only now understanding his power. Hartapu ruled in the eighth century BCE in what is now central Türkiye. He was a little-known ruler until in 2019, when inscribed stone pulled from an introduced the world to a king who claimed to have conquered Phrygia. Curated by ISAC and MES Associate Professor of Anatolian Archaeology, James Osborne, this exhibition tells his story through ancient inscriptions, archaeological finds, and new technologies, including 3D printing and advanced imaging. 

Join us at UChicago’s Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures for a special tour of the exhibition led by Anna Berlekamp, PhD candidate in Near Eastern Archaeology and ISAC Museum Educator Lead.

Tickets are required but free; space is limited.

Speaker(s): Anna Berlekamp

Micro-tour of the Smart Museum’s headline fall exhibition. 

Join curator Allison Martino for a brief introduction to teamLab: Everything Exists in Infinite Continuity, the first Midwest exhibition of the Tokyo-based art collective teamLab. Known for immersive digital installations that explore perception, consciousness, and the relationship between self and world, teamLab draws on approaches to perspective found in historical East Asian art. 

Each 15-minute micro-tour offers an introduction to the exhibition and a closer look at two key artworks before you explore the immersive galleries at your own pace.

Meet in the Smart Museum lobby.

Learn more about the exhibition: teamLab: Everything Exists in Infinite Continuity

Speaker(s): Allison Martino

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Chicago author in conversation

Daniel Kraus is the bestselling author of Whalefall, Angel Down, and The Sixth Nik. Daniel is based in Chicago and joins us to discuss his prolific career as a writer of novels, TV, and film. His novel Angel Down was awarded the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and is the first horror novel to win the prize since 2007. But it isn’t just a horror novel. It’s a war novel that blends magical realism, science fiction, and allegory, plunging you into the heart of World War I. Join us for a conversation with Kraus on writing as a craft, what it takes to write a novel in one sentence (like Angel Down), and how screenwriting opens up new possibilities for storytelling.

A book signing will follow this event.

Speaker(s): Daniel Kraus and Augustus Rose

A conversation on democracy’s fault lines

Democracies don’t collapse overnight. They erode, one small concession at a time. But what does democratic collapse actually look like from the inside? University of Chicago law professors Aziz Huq and Tom Ginsburg, authors of the new book How to Save a Constitutional Democracy, join NPR's Peter Sagal to unpack how constitutional systems around the world have unraveled — and what safeguards make some democracies more resilient than others.

Speaker(s): Aziz Huq, Tom Ginsburg, and Peter Sagal

The muralist and multimedia artist on art’s impact on belonging and shared spaces

Stephen “ESPO” Powers is the iconic New York-based artist best known for his sign painting and graffiti. Beginning his career in the 90s under the alias “ESPO” (Exterior Surface Painting Outreach), he quickly became a New York staple, covering dozens of storefront grates with bright, playful block lettering and toeing the line of legality.

Since then, he’s made the switch from graffiti to become a full-time studio artist. He’s won a Fulbright Scholarship, curated the Dreamland Artist’s Club, which commissioned over 45 artists to repaint signage and transform Coney Island, and has been featured in numerous exhibitions across the globe. Join us as Powers discusses how he uses walls, storefronts, hand-painted signs, and everyday architecture to explore belonging, memory, and the social life of neighborhoods. And how he uses creativity to deepen our understanding of neighborhoods, the built environment, and civic life.

Speaker(s): Stephen ESPO Powers and Danielle Aubert

Elisa Tamarkin on the fall of Saigon and the end of an era in war reporting with special guest Dean Deborah L. Nelson

How does it feel to recognize a historical ending while still living through it?

Named one of LitHub’s most anticipated books of the year, Done in a Day: Telex from the Fall of Saigonreconstructs the final days of the Vietnam War through the papers of the author’s stepfather, the Chicago Daily News Saigon bureau chief, who filed the last American correspondent’s report as Saigon fell in 1975. Social historian Elisa Tamarkin connects this personal history to the changing culture of war correspondence and the decline of the city newspaper, offering a meditation on how we understand, and record, the end of an era.

Tamarkin will situate the evacuation of Saigon in the mindset of the 1970s, psychologies of belief and defeat, existentialist philosophy, and the ongoing problem of raising political consciousness around world events, even when we have access to all the information we ever need to know.

Guest Interlocutor: Deborah L. Nelson
Dean of the Arts & Humanities Division Deborah L. Nelson will join Tamarkin for a special conversation following Tamarkin’s presentation, bringing her own work in twentieth-century American culture and politics to questions of history, memory, and journalism.

Free and open to the public, but registration is required. This event is presented in partnership with the University of Chicago Press and Seminary Co-op.

Speaker(s): Elisa Tamarkin and Deborah L. Nelson

Benjamin Saltzman on the ethics of averting one’s gaze. 

Why do we turn away from human suffering? What does it mean to lower our heads in grief or cover our faces in shame? In this conversation, Deputy Dean of the Arts and Humanities and Professor of English Benjamin Saltzman explores one of humanity's most familiar yet enigmatic gestures through the lens of his new book, Turning Away: The Poetics of an Ancient Gesture.

Drawing on literature, film, philosophy, art, and religion—from Plato and Augustine to Marc Chagall, Langston Hughes, and the present day—Saltzman traces how acts of looking away have shaped our moral and political imagination for centuries. The result is a timely meditation on attention, empathy, and the complicated ethics of witnessing.

This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required.

Speaker(s): Benjamin Saltzman and Lauren Michele Jackson

Sold Out

See what Chicago is made of

Named one of Chicago’s best tours by Curbed and Chicago Reader, this Brick of Chicago walking tour will take you through beautiful Hyde Park through the lens of the humble brick. You’ll look deep into the details that make up some of the neighborhood’s most remarkable buildings: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House, Barry Byrne’s St. Thomas the Apostle, and Edward Dart’s Augustana Lutheran Church.  Afterward, you’ll never look at Chicago the same way again.

Speaker(s): Will Quam

Sold Out

A portal into Chicago’s rich history

Get a glimpse into the history of Chicago’s finest and most photographed neighborhoods, districts, and buildings through the Doorways of Chicago Walking Tour, led by creator and architecture nerd Ronnie Frey. You’ll discover the Chicago hidden gems that bring you back in time.

Speaker(s): Ronnie Frey

Eric Slauter on how generations have reinterpreted the Declaration of Independence.

The story of the making of the Declaration of Independence often centers on its revolutionary authors, prominent politicians such as John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and (above all) Thomas Jefferson. But the Declaration we know today is equally a product of generations of readers, individuals and groups who discovered different meanings among its self-evident truths.

Join Eric Slauter for a guided tour of a special exhibition commemorating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Featuring rare books, manuscripts, and historical documents from the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, the exhibition invites visitors to experience the responses to the Declaration in the age of the American Revolution, consider unfolding understandings over time, and explore conflicting interpretations individuals and groups have proposed at significant moments in history.

Highlighting compelling and unique materials from the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries, and attending to the special role debates in Illinois have played in shaping the meaning of the Declaration, the exhibition will provide visitors with fresh perspectives on one of the most important documents in the history of modern politics. As the nation reflects on a significant milestone, the exhibit offers a forum for reflecting on the multiple legacies of the founding document of the United States.

Free and open to the public, but registration is required. This event is presented in partnership with the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center.

Speaker(s): Eric Slauter

The groundbreaking trans scholar on the story we tell about gender

Today, antigender ideology continues to be mobilized by the far right and transgender people’s lives are increasingly targeted. But what are we talking about when we talk about gender? Leading trans scholar Susan Stryker joins us for an urgent conversation on her new book, Changing Gender. Drawing on her decades of work as a historian, filmmaker, and activist, she’ll explore the concept of gender, its origins, and where we go from here.

A book signing will follow this program.

This event is presented in partnership with the Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality.

Speaker(s): Susan Stryker and Red Vaughn Tremmel

The MacArthur Fellow and National Book Award-winner on her new collection

Two-time National Book Award-winner Jesmyn Ward returns to Chicago Humanities to discuss her newest work, On Witness and Respair, a collection of essays documenting more than a decade of her work. The acclaimed titular essay, which appeared in Vanity Fair, tells the story of her partner’s sudden death on the eve of the COVID-19 epidemic. Join us for a conversation with Ward and get a glimpse into the life of a singular writer often lauded as “the heir apparent to Toni Morrison” (LitHub).

A book signing will follow this event.

Speaker(s): Jesmyn Ward and Stephanie Soileau

UChicago Classics scholars on why we keep returning to Homer.

What makes The Odyssey one of the world's most enduring stories—and why do artists keep reinventing it? Classics professors Emily Austin, Sarah Nooter, and Patrice Rankine explore what is gained and contested whenever an ancient epic is brought into a modern medium and historical moment. Together, they’ll consider how adaptations invite us to read Homer anew and ask whether fidelity to a classic matters for its continued relevance. 

This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required.

Speaker(s): Emily Austin, Patrice Rankine, and Sarah Nooter

Solo performances by the acclaimed musicians

Join us for an evening of music with two extraordinary performances in the stunning Rockefeller Chapel: Mary Lattimore and Haley Heynderickx. Lattimore, known for her ambient, meditative compositions, joins us in a solo harp performance, while Haley Heynderickx will perform a selection of her stunning solo work — drawing from folk, jazz, and her religious Filipino-American upbringing. Together, they will transform the Gothic space into an immersive evening of sound and songs.

Performer(s): Haley Heynderickx and Mary Lattimore

Considering America at 250 with leading UChicago scholars

Join us for a panel with esteemed faculty from the University of Chicago, who will discuss the construction, reception, and contemporary significance of the Declaration of Independence on America’s 250th birthday. The conversation will be moderated by NPR’s Peter Sagal.

This event is presented in partnership with the Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture.

Speaker(s): Alison L. LaCroix, Eric Slauter, Steve Pincus, and Peter Sagal