University of Chicago President Robert Zimmer recently discussed the ongoing integration of artistic practice and theory on campus in the Wall Street Journal, citing examples such as the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts and the Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry to illustrate the "rich environment" available both to students and surrounding neighborhoods. "We have a great research university sitting in the middle of a great city," he explained. "Arts are a natural place where a university can contribute to and benefit from the city."

From the article:

Great American universities study art, they analyze and critique it, but do they take the creation of it seriously?

Several of our great universities are beginning to rethink their aloof attitude toward the making of art, but the University of Chicago may be ahead of the game. It has recently spent millions of dollars on recruiting top artists for its faculty and on a bricks-and-mortar project to support the integration of art into the curriculum. One coup was to attract artist and former Yale professor Jessica Stockholder. Although Yale's School of Art was founded in 1869, and it has since added schools of drama, music and architecture, "those are graduate professional schools," Ms. Stockholder explained to me. "They aren't integrated into the liberal-arts curriculum in the humanities alongside philosophy, art, history and literature."

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