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>> When I got Chicago, one of the reasons I came was because the dean at the time,
Philip Gossett, said, "If you want to come here, you can do whatever you want."
>> I think that that makes it a very special place for the arts and for the activity
that we're tying to do because it's really a unique opportunity for artists to be engaged
in such an open and intense dialog with people who are thinking in so many different areas.
>> Of course everything is structured, but I found here a very strong structure
with a very open spirit, and that's just super beautiful and super cool.
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>> The announcement of the new Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts
and Inquiry is a great moment for the University of Chicago, and in particular,
for the division of the humanities.
>> It will allow a kind of population of creative people on campus
and a direct engagement with faculty members in a way that we've never really had formalized.
>> Part of what this center can do is to bring together people
who have maybe insipient interest or partly formed interest,
and to help them to realize that.
>> I think that everyone recognizes that this is an incredible opportunity to try out all sorts
of things that I think we dream of.
>> A university should be a place of experimentation, where we don't have
to assess everything in terms of its net present value before the fact.
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>> The faculty and students of the humanities division are natural allies and collaborators
with the practicing artists who will be brought into the community.
But we don't want to be the only ones in the sandbox playing.
>> What we wanted to do was, in good Chicago fashion, incentivize projects that would come
from the bottom up to provide resources and funding for faculty in whatever division
or school they came from to really try new kinds of scholarship.
>> We want people that, in some ways, have broader name recognition.
But I think, in the tradition of this University, we want to bring people that are
at the beginning of their careers and maybe looking at the world in very new ways.
And we may have them here ten years before they maybe much more widely recognized throughout
the world.
>> We would like to create collaborative relationships that would be substantive,
not merely sort of parachute relationships where artists come in, do what they do,
and then leave again in short order.
But rather substantive relationships in which collaboration could unfold over time.
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And then, as for what happens when we come together, the thought is to create structures
in which the unpredictability of what might occur is sustained and cultivated and supported.
>> People get to experience in a moment,
this opportunity where there's not just amazing things happening on campus,
but also it feels like the city is maturing in its love and commitment to the arts.
>> This project is pushing me, you know, and I feel that pressure
on my shoulders, but it feels well.
It's just great, and I'm going to go for it.
You know? It's exciting because then they are not only pushing you into an empty space,
but pushing you into a place full of possibilities, and that's what is beautiful.
So I find that really, really exciting, to see you as an artist being on the move,
which of course is what we always we want to be.
I think if we stay in the same place -- there is no staying in the same place.
>> You're going to die.
>> Right. It gets stale.
Yeah. So it is really beautiful and exciting --
>> Yeah, thank you.
Yeah, yeah.
Absolutely.
>> -- To see how it is --
>> Yes. Yeah, yeah.
>> It's wonderful that the University continues to grow and change and try new things.
And so I find that very exciting.
>> Yes. To see it opening itself more broadly to the arts
>> In new ways, yeah.
>> And accepting the notion that the arts are vital and important as any other discipline.
>> I think that the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry will be a very important motor for lots
of activity happening throughout campus.
It's not housed in one of the schools or divisions,
but it's really a University-wide effort.
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