University of Chicago Arts & Humanities Day 2026

Education doesn't end with a diploma. In fact, education doesn't end at all. Join your fellow lifelong learners at the University of Chicago's beautiful Hyde Park campus for a day of presentations from scholars, thinkers, and writers. Use our calendar view to plan your day.

UChicago Arts & Humanities Day Faculty-Designed Events

Location: The West Lounge in Ida Noyes Hall

Spend the day in conversation with University of Chicago faculty as they share new research that engages the enduring questions at the heart of the humanities.

Throughout UChicago Arts & Humanities Day, the West Lounge in Ida Noyes Hall will host a series of free talks exploring how literature, film, philosophy, and the classical world shape human experience.

From the politics of looking away from others’ suffering, to the history of Black love depicted on movie screens, to a roundtable of classics scholars on Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, these sessions bring audiences into the debates, archives, and thinking that drive humanities scholarship today.

These events are free and open to the public, but registration is required. Learn more here.

Guided Museum Tours

Location: The Exhibition Gallery of the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center on the first floor of the Joseph Regenstein Library

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 Featuring rare books, manuscripts, and historical documents from the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, the exhibition invites visitors to experience the responses to the Declaration in the age of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.

Tours are free and open to the public, but registration is required. Check back here soon to register.

Additional Free Programming

Drawing Sound: Charles White, Craig Taborn, and the Black Arts Tradition (1 – 2 p.m.)

Presenters: Craig Taborn and Ian White

Location: Logan Center for the Arts – Screening Room 201 (second floor)

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

Done in a Day: Telex from the Fall of Saigon (2 – 3 p.m.)

Presenter: Elisa Tamarkin

Location: Seminary Co-op

Elisa Tamarkin on the fall of Saigon and the end of an era in war reporting.

These events are free and open to the public, but registration is required. Check back here soon to register.